Almost immediately after Jan. 6, 2021, legal commentators began debating whether Section 3 of the 14th Amendment would disqualify former President Donald Trump from running in the 2024 presidential election. They debated whether or not Section 3 applies to a former president, whether it is self-executing, and whether Jan. 6 could be considered an insurrection or rebellion.
Since then, the issue became less abstract, though no less contentious. In February 2021, the U.S. Senate acquitted Trump of an impeachment article for inciting insurrection, but with a bipartisan majority of the Senate voting to convict. Section 3 challenges have been mounted against several legislators, and one state-level county commissioner who participated in the attack was successfully ousted from his post under that provision. At the end of 2022, the House Select Committee on the Jan. 6 Attack on the Capitol made the argument that Trump did inspire an insurrection, referring him to the Justice Department for prosecution under multiple criminal statutes, including one prohibiting insurrection. The Special Counsel’s Office has since brought a criminal case in Washington, D.C. charging Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 attack. And some prominent legal conservatives made the case for a strong, originalist reading of Section 3 that they argue would apply to Trump, immediately disqualifying him from office.
Beginning in winter 2023, voters and advocacy groups have brought Section 3 challenges in courts across the country, attempting to block Trump’s name from appearing on ballots for state primaries and caucuses before the general election begins, as Lawfare tracked and represented in the above map and table below. After Colorado became the first state in the nation to take Trump off its presidential primary ballot in Anderson et. al v. Griswold, the question reached the Supreme Court in Trump’s appeal of the decision in Trump v. Anderson (the docket for which Lawfare tracked and remains below). After hearing oral argument on Feb. 8, the Supreme Court ruled on March 4 that Trump could not be disqualified from Colorado’s presidential primary ballot under Section 3 without Congressional action. (Read Lawfare’s analysis on the decision.) That decision has effectively ended the array of challenges to Trump’s ballot eligibility.
Below you will find Lawfare’s past and continuing coverage of the legal and policy implications surrounding Trump Section 3 challenges, and primary source documents, analysis, and resources.
The Trump Disqualification Tracker was created by Hyemin Han with Caleb Benjamin on Oct. 30, 2023. The litigation tracker portion of the project was last updated and edited by Han, Anna Bower, Matt Gluck, Tyler McBrien, and Roger Parloff on March 4, 2024.
