Lawyer and voters sue to remove Trump from Michigan ballot – 9 & 10 News
Former President Donald Trump speaks in Clinton Township, Mich., Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2023. (Mike Mulholland/AP News)
A Michigan attorney is suing to remove former president Donald Trump from the state’s ballot, arguing that he’s constitutionally barred from serving in office.
Attorney Mark Brewer has filed a lawsuit with four Michigan voters and Free Speech For People, a nonprofit group that identifies as non-partisan but often supports progressive causes.
The litigants argue that Trump is automatically disqualified from consideration due to the 14th Amendment, a post-Civil War amendment which states that anybody who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the Constitution or United States shall not be permitted to run for or hold public office. The measure also applies to those who have “given aid or comfort” to those who have engaged in insurrection.
“That prohibition applies to Donald Trump, based on his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including inciting the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021,” Brewer said in an interview.
Brewer, a partner at Southfield law firm Goodman Acker, said Michigan voters have a right to only have eligible candidates for office on the ballot. He said the suit’s goal is to prevent Trump from appearing on the state’s presidential primary ballot in late February.
Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s Secretary of State and chief election official, has made it clear she doesn’t believe she has the authority to unilaterally remove a candidate from a ballot under the 14th Amendment.
“Whether Trump is eligible to run for president again is a decision not for secretaries of state but for the courts,” she wrote in the Washington Post. While Benson acknowledged that arguments for Trump’s removal under the 14th Amendment are “compelling,” the ultimate decision shouldn’t be vested in one individual, she said.
Brewer took her up on this assertion, filing his lawsuit against her department in the Michigan Court of Claims just over two weeks later. Cheri Hardmon, senior press secretary with the Michigan Department of State, said she wasn’t able to comment on pending litigation.
Benson and Brewer both acknowledged that the case could eventually be considered by the U.S. Supreme Court, but Benson said a final decision before the end of the primary election season would be far from guaranteed.
Benson also highlighted several potential issues with the legal argument, namely conflicts between states’ individual election laws, timing of a potential decision and an assurance that voters aren’t deprived of their choice of candidate on a political basis.
Brewer, former chair of the Michigan Democratic party, said the case is far from political.
“This is a bipartisan group of plaintiffs. There are Democrats and Republicans in this group of plaintiffs,” he said. “This is a bipartisan lawsuit, and this is about enforcing the rule of law as to everybody. Nobody is above the law — not Trump, not anybody else.”
Michigan is considered to be a crucial swing state in the 2024 presidential election. Trump won the state by just over 10,000 votes in 2016 but swung back to Biden by over 150,000 votes in 2020.
Both candidates recently visited Michigan in an attempted appeal to auto workers, with Biden joining striking UAW members on the picket line and Trump speaking to a rally of supporters at a non-union auto parts company.