CV NEWS FEED // A Democratic Illinois judge ordered that former President Donald Trump’s name be removed from the state’s primary ballot, claiming that the former president “engage[d] in insurrection.”
Cook County Circuit Court Judge Tracie Porter wrote in her Wednesday ruling that, “based on engaging in insurrection on January 6, 2021, [Trump’s] name should be removed from the ballot.”
No legal entity has ever charged the 45th President with insurrection.
Illinois is set to hold its Republican presidential primary on March 19.
Porter’s order also called on the Illinois State Board of Election to remove Trump from the ballot or “cause any votes cast for him to be suppressed, according to the procedures within their administrative authority.”
The Daily Wire reported that the Democratic judge “stayed her order, giving Trump until Friday to appeal her ruling while early voting in the state’s presidential primary is already underway.”
Trump appealed the order on the same day it was issued.
A spokesperson for Trump’s presidential campaign stated Wednesday: “Today, an activist Democrat judge in Illinois summarily overruled the state’s board of elections and contradicted earlier decisions from dozens of other state and federal jurisdictions.”
“This is an unconstitutional ruling that we will quickly appeal,” the spokesperson continued. “In the meantime, President Trump remains on the Illinois ballot, is dominating the polls, and will Make America Great Again!”
Legal scholar Jonathan Turley also weighed in on the decision.
“Porter just added Illinois to the two other states stripping Trump from the ballot,” Turley wrote on X (formerly Twitter) Wednesday. “While wildly popular with people in Cook County (where I was raised), it is also wildly at odds with our democratic values…”
Cook County includes almost the entirety of the city of Chicago. In 2020, it voted for President Biden by about a 3-1 margin.
“Rather than wait for the [Supreme] Court to rule, Porter wanted to claim this distinction while giving Trump’s counsel just a couple days to appeal,” Turley noted.
Like those who justified previous attempts to remove Trump’s name from state ballots in Colorado and Maine, Porter cited Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution in her decision.
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Section 3 prevents individuals “having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States … to support the Constitution” from “hold[ing] any office, civil or military” if they have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
The Constitutional provision was ratified in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. Prior to the past few months, it was almost never invoked in its more-than-150-year history.
In January, Trump appealed the Colorado decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments early the following month. The court is widely expected to rule either 9-0 or 8-1 to keep Trump’s name on the Colorado ballot.
The pending Supreme Court case represents the first time the Supreme Court has ever heard a case regarding Section 3.
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In January, CatholicVote reported that “Trump’s lawyers took various issues with the Colorado Supreme Court using [Section 3] to disqualify their client.”
“First, the President is not ‘an officer of the United States,’” the former president’s lawyers wrote in their appeal. “Thus, President Trump falls outside the scope of section 3.”
They also contested the characterization of the events of January 6, 2021 as an “insurrection.”
