A 55-year-old ruling involving a former Black Panther leader could keep Donald Trump off several state ballots in the 2024 presidential election, Newsweek reports.
In Colorado, a district court judge ruled that Trump “engaged in insurrection," violating Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. The clause prohibits individuals from “hold(ing) any office, civil or military, under the United States” if they have “previously taken an oath … as an officer of the United States” to “support the Constitution" and then engaged in insurrection or rebellion.
The clause might be exercised against Trump as he is facing criminal charges in connection to the insurrection of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The Colorado Supreme Court is hearing arguments on whether to keep Trump off the state ballot in 2024 because of the lower court ruling.
Derek T. Muller, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, cited the case of Elridge Cleaver, a former Black Panther leader who ran for president in 1968 but was excluded from California's ballot because he didn't reach the minimum age requirement to hold the nation's highest office.
“Cleaver was the 33-year-old nominee of the Peace and Freedom Party. He challenged the exclusion in state court, which rejected his challenge. Cleaver petitioned for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court. Without comment, the Court rejected the petition,” Muller wrote.
Cleaver's case “demonstrates the fact that a state did exclude a candidate from the ballot for failure to meet the qualifications for office. And intriguingly, California excluded Cleaver even though Cleaver would become eligible during the four-year [presidential] term of office," according to Muller.
Muller noted that It's unclear whether Section 3 applies to presidents. Judges in Minnesota and Michigan have already rejected similar 14th Amendment challenges to exclude Trump from their states' presidential ballots.
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