Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows appealed a state court ruling on Friday that would delay any decision on whether to disqualify former President Donald Trump from the state’s primary ballot until the U.S. Supreme Court weighs in.
Superior Court Justice Michaela Murphy delayed the matter in a Jan. 17 ruling until after the Supreme Court decides on whether it was constitutional to remove Trump from the Colorado ballot, the first state to move to remove the former president under the 14th Amendment’s “insurrection” clause.
Bellows is effectively asking Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court to decide whether Trump can be on the ballot, despite the case pending at the nation’s highest court.
The Supreme Court is set to hear the Colorado dispute on Feb. 8, and a decision could follow relatively soon after, as multiple states have deadlines and requirements to procure Republican primary ballots with the names of eligible candidates in the coming weeks.
After the Colorado Supreme Court ruled on Dec. 19 to disqualify Trump from the Centennial State’s GOP primary election ballot, Maine’s top election official made the decision on her own to disqualify Trump because the state’s laws allow her to make such a decision.
Trump subsequently appealed to Maine’s superior court, prompting Murphy to hold that Bellows’s decision should not be examined until the highest court in the land decides the Colorado dispute.
By appealing, the matter will now be thrust to the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine. It’s not clear how the justices there will rule. Both Bellows’s and the Colorado Supreme Court’s decisions came with automatic stays until the appeals processes run their course, meaning Trump is still technically on the primary ballot in Maine and Colorado.
The Supreme Court’s eventual decision on the Colorado matter will have cascading effects on dozens of challenges to Trump’s ballot eligibility sprinkled throughout state court systems. If the justices reverse the Colorado decision, such ballot challenges will likely not pass constitutional muster elsewhere.
Most legal experts have suggested the justices will likely move to keep Trump on election ballots, and although some in the legal community believe that they may rule inversely, it is impossible to predict how the high court will rule. If the high court did rule against Trump’s cause, it could lead to a cascading effect of similar rulings in more states than just Colorado and Maine.
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Bellows said her decision was not reached “lightly” and that the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, which she claims was “at the behest of and with the knowledge and support of” Trump, required her to “act in response.” Her decision followed the Colorado Supreme Court’s 4-3 ruling that Trump did incite the riot; that ruling reversed a lower court ruling that found presidents did not count as “officers” of the United States, meaning Trump could be subject to disqualification under the 14th Amendment, in the lower court’s view.
On Friday, Trump submitted his opening briefs to the Supreme Court arguing why he should remain on state primary ballots and general election ballots. The high court’s docket has been stampeded by dozens of amicus briefs from parties for, against, or neutral on the thorny constitutional question.