California Democrats seem to think they’re entitled to decide for the entire country who is and is not allowed to run for president. The courts, however, are about to remind the Golden State’s political bullies that they aren’t any more significant to our constitutional system than their counterparts in Wyoming or Montana.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, was just slapped with two lawsuits over a law he signed last week requiring candidates to release their tax returns in order to qualify for the state’s primary ballot, a nakedly partisan stunt that was specifically designed to target President Trump.
The core legal issue is simple and straightforward: The U.S. Constitution establishes the qualifications for someone to serve as president, and states don’t have the authority to supersede the Constitution by imposing their own requirements.
If California’s new ballot access law were to be deemed legal (which it certainly won’t be) then it would logically follow that every other state would be equally entitled to pass similar measures restricting ballot access according to pretty much any criteria. This was exactly former California Gov. Jerry Brown’s concern when he vetoed a similar bill last year.
For that matter, the powers that California Democrats are trying to exercise could just as easily have been used by Republican-controlled states ahead of the 2012 elections to mandate that candidates must produce school records or in 2016 to require disclosure of health records.
There’s a reason they didn’t do that, and it’s not because Newsom and his liberal buddies are the only ones clever enough to concoct such a scheme, it’s because Newsom and his liberal buddies are the only ones arrogant enough to believe that they could ever get away with such a blatant usurpation of power.
Newsom’s haughty attitude is perfectly encapsulated by the snarky statement his office released in response to the lawsuits.
“There’s an easy fix for the president,” the governor sneered. “He should release his tax returns as he promised during the campaign and follow the precedent of every president since 1973.”
This isn’t “precedent” as much as tradition. Trump fulfills all the constitutional requirements. That’s all that matters. Newsom and the Democrats can’t force any candidate to follow anything else. The Constitution matters.
The legal challenge that the Trump campaign filed to overturn California’s new ballot restrictions is a clear win, and when the judge strikes down the law, we should hope the holding includes a sharply worded rebuke of Newsom’s ill-conceived political stunt.
That won’t be the only chiding that California Democrats get over this travesty, though, because there’s a second lawsuit that calls them out for attempting to exploit one-party control of the nation’s most populous state in order to disenfranchise millions of Republican voters. California Republicans are already effectively denied a meaningful say in statewide elections, but Newsom’s ballot access law would basically codify their exclusion by explicitly preventing them from voting for their preferred candidate for president.
California’s Democrats have gone too far with their attempt to disqualify Trump from their ballot. Fortunately, the courts must and will soon put them back in their place. This is exactly why we have a rule of law, so America isn’t held captive to the arbitrary whims of King Newsom.
Jenna Ellis Rives (@JennaEllisRives) is a member of the Trump 2020 Advisory Board. She is a constitutional law attorney, radio host, and the author of The Legal Basis for a Moral Constitution.
