Former President Donald Trump filed an appeal of Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows‘s ruling to remove him from Maine’s 2024 primary ballot.
Bellows, a Democrat, ruled last week that Trump cannot appear on the state’s primary ballot under an insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment, citing his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Trump on Tuesday filed his appeal to Kennebec Superior Court, five days after the decision.
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“Petitioner Donald J, Trump, by and through undersigned counsel, petitions this Court for review of a final order issued by Respondent Secretary of State Shenna Bellows,” a filing in the Maine Superior Court read.
The former president’s lawyers demanded that the appeals court place him back on the ballot “immediately.” They also said the secretary of state’s determination that he engaged in insurrection “relied entirely on President Trump’s public speeches,” adding that the “speeches did not incite insurrection, and therefore President Trump’s political speech was protected by the First Amendment.”
Trump’s attorneys also alleged Bellows is a “biased decisionmaker who should have recused herself” and said she “made multiple errors of law … act[ing] in an arbitrary and capricious manner.”
For those reasons, Trump’s lawyers said the court should declare Bellows has “no jurisdiction or authority” to keep Trump off the state’s ballot.
Trump’s filing in Maine comes as he prepares a separate appeal to the Supreme Court over a 4-3 decision from Colorado’s top court that would keep him off the ballot in that state. Challenges to remove Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, are proceeding in other states as well.
Bellows’s decision cited Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which states those who have sworn an oath to support the Constitution cannot hold office if they engaged in insurrection. That measure was ratified in 1868 to deter Civil War-era Confederates from returning to power. Her decision said state law requires her to make the call on a candidate’s eligibility for office, and she determined that Trump’s election fraud claims and his calls for protesters to come to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, amounted to participation in an insurrection after the protesters stormed the Capitol.
“The legislature did not write into the law an exception for complexity or difficult natures of interpretation,” Bellows said. “They didn’t say enforce all of the constitutional qualifications except for the ones that are difficult or complex.”
Trump’s lawyers countered Bellows in their Tuesday appeal, stating that the measure of the 14th Amendment “is not self executing” and that the question is only reserved for Congress and the Electoral College.
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Maine law requires a judge to decide the case within 20 days of Bellows’s decision, which came on Dec. 28. Bellow’s ruling is on hold until then, meaning Trump’s name will be on the ballot in the meantime. The state’s primary will happen on Super Tuesday, March 5.
The losing side could appeal to the Maine Supreme Court, with the state giving two weeks for a decision. The matter could ultimately wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court, which is already being asked to consider a similar dispute out of Colorado.
