The U.S. Supreme Court ended efforts to disqualify former President Donald Trump from the ballot in Illinois under the 14th Amendment with its reversal Monday of a decision by the Colorado Supreme Court.
Cook County Circuit Judge Tracie Porter relied heavily on that Colorado decision in agreeing Wednesday that Trump should be removed from Illinois’ ballot.
Now the very decision she hung her hat on has been undone by the nation’s high court.
“The issue of whether or not Donald Trump can be barred from the Illinois ballot — the Supreme Court has spoken on that,” said Caryn Lederer, an attorney for five voters who objected to Trump’s candidacy here.
The Supreme Court ruled in its unanimous decision Monday that Congress is responsible for enforcing the 14th Amendment against candidates for federal office — not states like Colorado or Illinois.
Last week, Porter made Illinois the third state to block Trump from the ballot based on a provision in the 14th Amendment barring individuals who engaged in an insurrection from later seeking public office.
The group that challenged Trump in Illinois reacted angrily to the court’s ruling, which it called a “mockery.”
“This decision is disgraceful,” said Ron Fein, legal director of Free Speech For People, which co-led the Illinois challenge. “The Supreme Court couldn’t exonerate Trump because the evidence of his guilt was overwhelming, so instead the Justices neutered our Constitution’s built-in defense against insurrectionists and said the facts don’t matter.”
Another lawyer in the case called the ruling alarming.
“The Supreme Court has spoken on constitutional procedure, but its decision does not address or override the clear facts: Donald Trump supported and incited the January 6th attack on the Capitol. He should not be president,” said Lederer, of the Hughes Socol Piers Resnick & Dym law firm, which also was involved in the Illinois challenge. “This must ring like an alarm to voters. Donald Trump tried to overthrow our democracy. He cannot lead it.”
Meanwhile, Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, one of President Biden’s top re-election campaign surrogates, said the Supreme Court decision in favor of Trump should not be interpreted as a political loss to Democrats.
“We want him on the ballot, frankly, because he’s a detriment to Republicans across the United States but especially in Illinois,” Pritzker said Sunday on MSNBC.
Porter made clear last week that any Supreme Court ruling “inconsistent” with hers — ordering Trump off Illinois’ ballot — would keep her ruling on hold.
However, her order never actually went into effect. She also agreed to keep things on hold while Trump’s lawyers pursued an appeal. So there have been no changes at the ballot box in Illinois.
Still, Lederer and other attorneys for the five objecting voters here have said the Supreme Court’s ruling — no matter how it turned out — would not end their case completely.
They’ve insisted there are still disputes over Illinois law that will keep it alive, possibly until it reaches the Illinois Supreme Court.
For now, the case is in the hands of the First District Appellate Court.
Porter last week found that Trump failed to qualify for the presidency under the 14th Amendment “based on engaging in insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.”
The 14th Amendment bars from “any office, civil or military, under the United States” anyone who previously took an oath as an “officer of the United States” to support the Constitution but then engaged in “insurrection or rebellion.”
Trump’s lawyers argued to the Supreme Court the amendment doesn’t apply because the president is not an “officer of the United States” under the Constitution and because he did not engage in “anything that qualifies as ‘insurrection.’”
Jon Seidel covers federal courts for the Chicago Sun-Times, and Dave McKinney covers Illinois politics for WBEZ.
