The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that former President Donald Trump is eligible for the 2024 primary ballot, rejecting a lawsuit claiming that he was constitutionally unable to appear. The decision also casts doubt on a similar challenge in Colorado.
The lawsuit’s litigants argued that Trump was unable to serve as president due to a clause in the 14th Amendment regarding engaging in “insurrection.”
The court ruled that Trump was indeed eligible for the upcoming Republican primary ballot but did not make a decision on the 2024 general election ballot. The court determined that the general election question was a separate issue.
According to the justices, the filers of the lawsuit were legally able to bring the case to court, but they reached “a different conclusion regarding petitioners’ claim that it would be error for the Secretary of State to place former President Trump’s name on the ballot for the 2024 general election ballot.”
Minnesota court dismisses 14th Amendment case seeking to block Trump from primary ballot https://t.co/jzfVYJDS6A pic.twitter.com/fpiCGNGIcJ
— New York Post (@nypost) November 9, 2023
A similar lawsuit in Colorado also alleges that the former president is unable to appear on the 2024 ballot.
The Centennial State lawsuit argued that Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021 were inappropriate.
Trump’s legal team requested that Judge Sarah B. Wallace recuse herself from the case after it was discovered that she donated $100 in 2022 to a liberal activist group. However, Wallace rejected the effort.
The Trump 2024 campaign said that there was “no legal basis” for the lawsuit and that the case represented “lawfare” intending to keep the candidate off the ballot.
“Joe Biden, Democrats and Never Trumpers are scared to death because they see polls showing President Trump winning in the general election,” the Trump campaign wrote.
The campaign further called the suit an “absurd conspiracy theory and political attack on President Trump” that was “stretching the law beyond recognition much like the political prosecutors in New York, Georgia and D.C.”
The statement referenced a number of federal and local prosecutions of the former president, including the high-profile Fulton County, Georgia prosecution of Trump and some of his associates.
