Massachusetts voters are vying for former President Donald Trump‘s removal from their state’s Republican primary ballot, joining the growing set of efforts to prevent Trump from appearing on the 2024 primary ballot.
Free Speech For People and a Massachusetts-based civil rights firm are representing voters trying to block Trump from appearing on the state’s ballot under an insurrection clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which prevents people who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office.
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In a Thursday filing to the Massachusetts Ballot Law Commission, the groups said the Republican front-runner, “through his words and actions, after swearing an oath as an officer of the United States to support the Constitution, engaged in insurrection or rebellion, or gave aid and comfort to its enemies, as defined by Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment,” and he is therefore ineligible to hold office.
“Donald Trump violated his oath of office and incited a violent insurrection that attacked the U.S. Capitol, threatened the assassination of the Vice President and congressional leaders, and disrupted the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in our nation’s history,” Ron Fein, Legal Director at Free Speech For People, said in a press statement.
Free Speech For People has filed lawsuits on behalf of voters in Minnesota, Michigan, and Oregon. The advocacy group also filed a suit in Illinois on Thursday with Illinois co-counsel Hughes Socol Piers Resnick & Dym and election lawyer Ed Mullen.
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“Our country faces a crisis in Trump’s bid for reelection. We cannot let a candidate who revels in undermining the rule of law continue his candidacy in clear violation of a constitutional mandate. In Illinois, the electoral board has a mandatory duty to keep disqualified candidates off the ballot. As the growing consensus of legal decisions show, Trump engaged in insurrection; he cannot run for president,” attorney Caryn Lederer said in a press statement announcing the efforts in Illinois.
Trump’s attorneys are appealing decisions in two states that would remove him from the primary ballot. Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, ruled Trump should not be on the ballot last week, and her ruling came after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled he was ineligible to hold the presidency. The Supreme Court has yet to take up Trump’s challenges to rulings against him, but that could change soon. Over a dozen states have pending lawsuits seeking to disqualify Trump from the ballot.
