A divided bench on the Minnesota Supreme Court showed skepticism over removing Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot during a Thursday hearing brought by challengers who say the former president sparked the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and should be disqualified.
Several Minnesota voters filed the lawsuit to block Trump from appearing on the primary ballot, asking the state high court justices to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which was ratified after the Civil War and includes a clause stating those who "engaged in insurrection" can't hold future office.
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“Let’s say we agree with you that Section 3 is self-executing and that we do have the authority under the relevant statute to keep Mr. Trump’s name off the ballot," Chief Justice Natalie Hudson posited.
"'Should we?' is the question that concerns me the most," Hudson added, pressing her view that the matter may ultimately be up to Congress to decide.
Five state Supreme Court justices, four appointed by Democrats, are weighing the case after two others on the bench recused themselves.
While some of the justices were less convinced by this argument, there was also some openness to the challengers' request to hold future hearings to consider the obscure constitutional questions behind the underlying case arguments.
Ron Fein, legal director at the Free Speech For People advocacy group backing the anti-Trump challenge in the state, called on the justices to “uphold the U.S. Constitution and defend American democracy” by ruling that Trump is disqualified from office.
“Beginning before the 2020 election and culminating on Jan. 6, 2021, Donald Trump engaged in rebellion and insurrection against the Constitution of the United States in a desperate attempt to remain in office after losing the election,” Fein said. “Section 3 of the 14th Amendment protects the Republic from oath-breaking insurrectionists because its framers understood that if they’re allowed back into power, they will do the same or worse.”
On the other side of the case was Reid LeBeau, a lawyer representing the Republican Party of Minnesota who argued that judicial intervention over this challenge would impede the state GOP's First Amendment right to choose their own candidate to align with.
Trump and his campaign say allowing such ballot challenges to go through would unleash chaos throughout the 2024 election if different states allow the complete list of candidates but not others. “At the end of the primrose path that they’ve created, we could potentially have 50 different states with 50 different ballots with none of the same people appearing on the ballot,” LeBeau said.
Hudson later suggested that the high-stakes legal question would be better off being answered by the U.S. Supreme Court, "which is where this probably should be decided."
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The hearing in Minnesota's highest court comes after a separate but similar weeklong trial was underway in Colorado. That challenge is backed by the liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which is representing six voters seeking to remove Trump from the ballot.
Another similar case is scheduled for oral arguments next week in Michigan.