The trial over an effort in Minnesota to keep former President Donald Trump off of the 2024 ballot began Thursday at the state Supreme Court as a similar case continued in Colorado.
The lawsuits in both states allege Trump should be barred from the 2024 ballot for his conduct leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. They argue Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results violated Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which says no one who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” after swearing an oath to support and defend the Constitution can hold office.
A group of Minnesota voters, represented by the election reform group Free Speech for People, sued in September to remove Trump from the state ballot under the 14th Amendment provision. The petitioners include former Minnesota Secretary of State Joan Growe and former state Supreme Court Justice Paul H. Anderson.
The plaintiffs in the Minnesota case are asking the state’s highest court to disqualify Trump’s eligibility to appear on the ballot and for the secretary of state to bar him from the ballot for the state’s presidential primary in March.
The lawsuit doesn’t name Trump as a defendant. Instead, it names Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, who had previously rejected letters from Free Speech for People demanding him to take action. Simon has maintained that his office lacks the authority to determine a candidate’s eligibility to run for office.
“In the case of presidential candidates, the major political parties will submit names of candidates to our office for the Presidential Nomination Primary by January 2, 2024. Those submissions will appear on the ballot for the March 5, 2024 contest unless a court says otherwise,” Simon said in a statement in September.
Ron Fein, a lawyer for the plaintiffs and legal director at Free Speech for People, said at the time that the legal action was necessary because Trump “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.”
“Trump is legally barred from the ballot and election officials must follow this constitutional mandate,” Fein added.
In opening arguments, Fein said Section 3 of the 14th Amendment is “self-executing” and therefore the court has the “duty to interpret and enforce” the Constitution. He said Minnesota law gives the court authority to regulate ballot access and decide whether candidates are eligible to run for office.
Fein also emphasized Trump's oath to support the Constitution as an officer of the U.S.: “No party has disputed that the presidency is an office under the United States. If Trump claims that he was not an officer — which would make it an officer-less office — and he claims that his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution was not an oath to support the Constitution, these arguments make a mockery of Section 3 and the constitutional democracy that it was enacted to preserve.”
Fein requested the court schedule a “prompt evidentiary hearing.”
The lawyer for Simon, state Assistant Attorney General Nathan Hartshorn, said the secretary of state is “not taking a position on any of the merits issues in this case," but that he believes it is “ripe for adjudication.”
Nicholas Nelson, an attorney for Trump, said in opening arguments that “there is no more political question in our constitutional order than who should be president." For that reason, Nelson said, the state Supreme Court should not step in.
“When parties ask the courts to step into that process, and to decide who can or can’t be president, the courts overwhelmingly say that’s not a decision that should be made in the judiciary,” he said. “That’s a decision that should be made elsewhere.”
Nelson also requested the court to dismiss the petitioners’ request for an evidentiary hearing: “Our position is that you simply read the allegations of the petition, you look at what’s in the public record, and it’s clear from that, that this does not rise to the scope or scale of an insurrection — and in particular, that what President Trump did in connection with it does not involve engaging in an insurrection.”
Reid LeBeau, attorney for the Minnesota Republican Party, argued that neither Congress nor the states have stated what or who can define the legal definition of “insurrection or rebellion.”
Trump's campaign did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment on the Minnesota trial. The former president, who continues to falsely claim he won the 2020 election, has called efforts to boot him from the 2024 ballot under the 14th Amendment “nonsense” and “election interference.”
The Minnesota lawsuit was filed after another group of voters backed by the left-leaning government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a lawsuit to prohibit Trump from appearing on the ballot in Colorado. A trial in that case began earlier this week.
Similar legal challenges centered on the 14th Amendment provision were filed in other states, including New Hampshire, Arizona and Michigan.
CORRECTION (Nov. 2, 2023, 2:21 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misspelled the name of a former Minnesota secretary of state. She is Joan Growe, not Grove.
