Massachusetts has become the latest state to try and boot former President Donald Trump from the state’s primary ballot.
On Thursday, Free Speech For People and a Massachusetts-based civil rights firm filed a lawsuit on behalf of voters trying to prohibit Trump from appearing on the ballot under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment.
According to The Washington Examiner, in a Thursday filing to the Massachusetts Ballot Law Commission, the groups said the Republican front-runner, “through his words and actions, after swearing an oath as an officer of the United States to support the Constitution, engaged in insurrection or rebellion, or gave aid and comfort to its enemies, as defined by Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment,” and he is, therefore, ineligible to hold office.
“Donald Trump violated his oath of office and incited a violent insurrection that attacked the U.S. Capitol, threatened the assassination of the Vice President and congressional leaders, and disrupted the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in our nation’s history,” Ron Fein, Legal Director at Free Speech For People, said in a press statement.
The advocacy group also filed a suit in Illinois on Thursday with Illinois co-counsel Hughes Socol Piers Resnick & Dym and election lawyer Ed Mullen.
“Our country faces a crisis in Trump’s bid for reelection. We cannot let a candidate who revels in undermining the rule of law continue his candidacy in clear violation of a constitutional mandate. In Illinois, the electoral board has a mandatory duty to keep disqualified candidates off the ballot. As the growing consensus of legal decisions show, Trump engaged in insurrection; he cannot run for president,” attorney Caryn Lederer said in a press statement announcing the efforts in Illinois.
Free Speech For People has also filed lawsuits on behalf of voters in Minnesota, Michigan, and Oregon.
Trump is appealing decisions in Colorado and Maine that are keeping him off the ballot.
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