The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from a former New Mexico county commissioner who was kicked out of office over his participation in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Former Otero County commissioner Couy Griffin, a cowboy pastor who rode to national political fame by embracing then-President Donald Trump with a series of horseback caravans, is the only elected official thus far to be banned from office in connection with the Capitol attack, which disrupted Congress as it was trying to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory over Trump.
At a 2022 trial in state district court, Griffin received the first disqualification from office in over a century under a provision of the 14th Amendment written to prevent former Confederates from serving in government after the Civil War.
Though the Supreme Court ruled this month that states don’t have the ability to bar Trump or other candidates for federal offices from the ballot, the justices said different rules apply to state and local candidates.
The decision is garbage. States already have the right to disqualify presidents for other constraints: age, natural citizenship at birth, residency in the US.
More to the point, states don’t even have an obligation to qualify anyone for a primary because they have no obligation to hold one in the first place! As far as the US Constitution is concerned, state legislatures could simply appoint electors if they wanted, and the only reason states hold popular votes to begin with is because of their own state laws imposing requirements on themselves.