A Chalmette woman is suing to keep former President Donald Trump off the Louisiana ballot during the 2024 election cycle.
According to published reports, Ashley Reeb filed her lawsuit in East Baton Rouge Parish, demanding the Secretary of State's Office disqualify Trump for "engaging in insurrection" during the January 6, 2021, riots outside the United States Capitol.
Reeb's suit comes one week after the Colorado Supreme Court disqualified Trump from appearing on their state's ballots. The Colorado decision cites the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, which prohibits any person who has "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof" from holding public office.
A local legal analyst says whatever the Louisiana courts decide won't matter.
"The ultimate success or failure of that suit is going to be decided by the U. S. Supreme Court," Loyola law professor Dane Ciolino said, adding that the Supreme Court will almost certainly take up this case and review the constitutional issues presented by the Colorado decision. "Whatever the Supreme Court decides is going to be the law of the land."
Ciolino says the Supreme Court justices will have to weigh a few specific questions in making their decsion.
"Did President Trump, at the time, engage in an insurrection?" Ciolino said, naming one of the issues justices will face. "The question presented is whether the Fourteenth Amendment--section three of the Fourteenth Amendment--applies in this situation. It really presents three issues: (1) whether former President Trump was an 'officer of the United States' at the time, (2) whether he "engaged in (3) insurrection. Those are the principal issues, and frankly, none of them are frivolous issues, and some of them present very close calls, but the close calls won't be made by judges in Louisiana, but by the U. S. Supreme Court in Washington."
