The 14th Amendment argument that has gotten former President Donald Trump barred from some state ballots is already spreading beyond the former president after a lawsuit was filed Tuesday seeking to block Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) from appearing on Pennsylvania‘s ballot.
Harrisburg-area activist and former congressional candidate Gene Stilp filed a lawsuit on Jan. 2 calling for Republican Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt to remove Perry from the ballot ahead of the April 23 10th Congressional District primary.
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Perry was ordered by Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg of Washington, D.C., on Dec. 20 to turn his cellphone over to the FBI as part of an investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The GOP lawmaker had maintained contact with Trump administration and Republican Party officials in late 2020 regarding the former president’s legal efforts to overturn his defeat to President Joe Biden.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment states that no one can hold public office if they have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies.”
Stilp’s lawsuit alleged Perry helped push Trump’s election fraud claims and aided in an effort to replace the attorney general at the time with an official who would be more loyal to Trump.
“Scott Perry was a leading proponent of using the Jan. 6, 2021, Congressional presidential election certification process to disrupt the transfer of presidential administration from Trump to Biden,” Stilp’s lawsuit said.
A campaign spokesperson for Perry told the Philadelphia Inquirer that the lawsuit is “frivolous, filed by a fringe activist whose claim to fame is an inflatable pink pig.” Stilp, known for his public advocacy campaigns, used the inflatable pig to protest wage increases for state legislators in 2005.
The same 14th Amendment argument being used against Perry has formed the basis of a flurry of lawsuits seeking to bar Trump from state primary ballots across the nation, leading to a Colorado Supreme Court ruling last month that found Trump did “engage” in insurrection on the day of the riot and thereby disqualified him from the ballot. Maine’s Democratic secretary of state made a similar decision on her own one week later, declaring Trump ineligible for the ballot there. The separate decisions are on hold, and Trump has appealed both, with the U.S. Supreme Court now being asked to settle the Colorado dispute by Trump and the Colorado Republican Party as of Wednesday evening.
Mike Davis — a former chief counsel to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who has been rumored as a possible attorney general in a new Trump administration — told the Washington Examiner that the fact that Perry is now facing a similar legal threat as Trump indicates “the Democrats will use this against all Republicans going forward if this has not stopped now.”
“This sets a very dangerous precedent, where if you can’t reach your political enemies at the ballot box, you just disqualify them under bogus legal theories. These are Republican-ending tactics by Democrats,” Davis said.
Unlike Trump, who is facing 91 criminal charges spread across four indictments, Perry has not been charged with any criminal wrongdoing. The usage of this Civil War-era provision, intended to bar Confederates from holding public office in the 19th century, has already been used against a Republican county commissioner in New Mexico for his role in the Jan. 6 riot.
New Mexico Judge Francis Mathew ordered former Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin in September 2022 to be removed from office for violating Section 3 after he was convicted in federal court of a misdemeanor for entering the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021, without going inside the building. He was sentenced to 14 days and given credit for time served.
Mathew’s ruling barring Griffin from office was the first time since 1869 that a person was removed from public office for violating Section 3.
Griffin made his appeal to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, asking the justices to review the ruling that ousted him from his seat, according to the Albuquerque Journal. Peter Ticktin, an attorney representing Griffin, said he thinks the case has a decent shot of being weighed by the nine justices due to the rising number of 14th Amendment disputes ahead of the 2024 election.
“If you are going to ban somebody from holding public office for the rest of their lives, that’s the government taking punitive action against somebody,” Ticktin said.
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New Mexico is also a state weighing lawsuits over Trump’s eligibility to be on the state’s primary ballot. That case, filed by little-known Republican presidential candidate John Anthony Castro, is awaiting a ruling from a federal judge after a Nov. 28 hearing in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico.
If the Supreme Court agrees to take up Trump’s appeal of the Colorado decision, its subsequent ruling could determine the fate of dozens of 14th Amendment challenges the former president faces, as the Republican front-runner aims to seize the nomination to take on his likely rival Biden in November.
