Minnesota Supreme Court justices appeared skeptical Thursday that states have the authority to block former President Donald Trump from the ballot, with some suggesting that Congress is best positioned to decide whether his role in the 2021 U.S. Capitol attack should prevent him from running.
Justices sharply questioned an attorney representing Minnesota voters who had sued to keep Trump, the early front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, off the state ballot under the rarely used “insurrection” clause of the U.S. Constitution. Citing Congress’ role in certifying presidential electors and its ability to impeach, several justices said it seemed that questions of eligibility should be settled there.
“And those all seem to suggest there is a fundamental role for Congress to play and not the states because of that,” Chief Justice Natalie E. Hudson said. “It’s that interrelation that I think is troubling, that suggests that this is a national matter for Congress to decide.”…
Trump’s lawyers acknowledged in their filings that the question of whether he “is suited to hold the Presidency has been the defining political controversy of our national life” for the last several years. But they came to a different conclusion about how to define the assault on the Capitol, arguing in an earlier court filing that “as awful as the melee was, and as disturbing as the rioters’ actions were, it was not a war upon the United States.”
On Thursday, Nelson told the justices, “It did not reach the scale and scope of what would be regarded as an insurrection.”
The justices themselves seemed to be wrestling with the question: “Insurrection might be in the eye of the beholder, so it depends on who’s doing the beholding,” Hudson said.
Trump’s lawyers noted that the former president has never been charged in any court with insurrection — although he does face state and federal criminal charges for his attempts to overturn his loss to Biden. Trump has criticized the cases as a form of “election interference” intended to prevent a rematch with Biden.