Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Suit: Trump ineligible for presidency
14th Amendment bars those engaged in revolt
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A South Florida lawyer has filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump seeking to have the former president declared ineligible to run for another term as president.
The lawsuit, citing Trump’s involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, wants the federal courts to enforce the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, added after the Civil War to prevent people who engaged in rebellion against the United States from holding office again.
Lawrence Caplan’s lawsuit asserts the provision applies to Trump:
“President Trump’s efforts both in Washington, as well as in Georgia and perhaps other states, as well as the consequential assault on the U.S. Capitol … make him ineligible to ever serve in federal office again. Now given that the facts seem to be crystal clear that Trump was involved to some extent in the insurrection that took place on January 6th, the sole remaining question is whether American jurists who swear an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution upon their entry to the bench, will choose to follow the letter of the Constitution in this case.”
The theory has received attention in recent weeks after legal scholars — including one of the nation’s preeminent conservative legal thinkers and members of the conservative Federalist Society — said the 14th Amendment unquestionably applies to Trump, and prohibits him from another term.
Caplan’s lawsuit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in South Florida, utilizes that theory in asking the court to declare Trump is barred from seeking the presidency and is barred from participating in the 2024 Florida Republican primary.
Despite the legal underpinnings for the case, some experts are skeptical.
“Realistically, it’s not a Hail Mary, but it’s just tossing the ball up and hoping it lands in the right place,” said Charles Zelden, a professor of history and legal studies who specializes in politics and voting at Nova Southeastern University. “It’s hopefulness that we can make the problem that is Trump simply go away. And I’m sorry, Trump is too big a problem to simply go away. He’s too much of a challenge to the system.”
“It’s kind of one of those ideas that only a law professor could love,” Zelden said.
In a scholarly paper posted online earlier this month and slated for publication next year in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, William Baude of the University of Chicago Law School and Michael Stokes Paulsen of University of St. Thomas School of Law, detailed their conclusion after a year of research that the 14th Amendment disqualifies Trump.
Both are members of the Federalist Society, the incubator of conservative and limited-government legal thinking that has effectively become a requirement for judicial nominations during Trump’s presidency and in Florida under Gov. Ron Desantis.
Also, on Aug. 19, J. Michael Luttig, a former federal appeals court judge and leading conservative thinker, and Laurence Tribe, a liberal professor emeritus of constitutional law at Harvard Law School, wrote in The Atlantic that the 14th Amendment disqualifies Trump.
Zelden said procedurally it may make more sense for someone challenging Trump’s ability to run would more appropriately file suit against the secretary of state — in charge of elections in many states. “Suing Trump directly is not likely to have the impact that (Caplan) wants.”