Maine‘s high court declined to weigh in on whether former President Donald Trump can be disqualified from the 2024 ballot under the 14th Amendment, upholding a judge’s decision that the situation must be put on hold until the United States Supreme Court reviews a similar case out of Colorado.
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows announced in December that Trump did not meet the qualifications to appear on the primary ballot in the state under a section of the 14th Amendment disqualifying those who “engaged in insurrection” from holding public office. Her decision to remove Trump came days after the Colorado Supreme Court removed Trump from the state’s ballot.
The Maine Superior Court, the state’s trial court, ruled on Jan. 17 that Bellows’s removal of Trump would be delayed until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the Colorado case. She appealed that decision to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court last week.
However, the Supreme Judicial Court upheld Superior Court Justice Michaela Murphy’s decision, meaning that Trump will remain on Maine’s 2024 primary ballot until the U.S. Supreme Court reaches a decision.
“The Law Court has made clear in its decision yesterday that we must await the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Colorado case before proceeding further,” Bellows said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “As I said last week, I welcome a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court in the Colorado case and hope that it will answer the important Fourteenth Amendment questions for all the states.”
Steven Cheung, Trump’s spokesman, called the ruling a “devastating” blow to Bellows, referring to her as President Joe Biden’s “acolyte.”
“This disenfranchisement effort, led by Crooked Joe’s Democrat acolyte and desperate partisan Secretary of State, was soundly rejected by Maine’s Supreme Court in a dismissal of the Secretary’s appeal of a prior order, which kept President Trump on the ballot,” Cheung said in a statement. “President Trump is confident that the United States Supreme Court will ultimately be fair and eliminate these meritless, sham ‘14th Amendment’ cases once and for all. Until then, President Trump will continue to fight them off at every turn. Make America Great Again!”
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments in the Colorado case on Feb. 8, with a ruling from the high court expected to come out soon after due to the primary season that already started with New Hampshire and Iowa.
Led by Republican Attorneys General Todd Rokita of Indiana and Patrick Morrisey of West Virginia, 27 states filed an amicus brief arguing the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision “threatens to throw the 2024 presidential election into chaos.”
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Other states have attempted to remove Trump from their ballot with little success. Courts in Michigan and Minnesota, as well as an elections board in Massachusetts, threw out or ruled against legal challenges looking to remove the former president from the ballot. New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan concluded that the 14th Amendment did not apply to the election process and said he was legally required to place anyone on the ballot who met the filing requirements.
