Former President Donald Trump just got some great news from Florida, where Judge Robin Rosenberg tossed out a lawsuit that attempted to use the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution to get Trump off of the presidential ballot.
As background, Florida lawyer Lawrence Caplan filed the lawsuit a week ago. The basis for the lawsuit was that former President Donald Trump has fallen afoul of the Fourteenth Amendment by being present on January 6th.
The Fourteenth Amendment comes in because Caplan and others on the left allege that January 6th was an insurrection and Section Three of that Amendment provides, “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
Judge Rosenberg didn’t buy it. So she swiftly slapped down Caplan’s lawsuit, tossing it out and saying that he and the two others who filed the lawsuit with him had no standing to challenge Trump’s spot on the presidential ballot.
In her ruling, Judge Rosenberg said, “Plaintiffs lack standing to challenge Defendant’s qualifications for seeking the Presidency.” Continuing, she added that “the injuries alleged” from the January 6th Capitol Hill protest, one which occurred more than two years ago, “are not cognizable and not particular to them.”
Next, Rosenberg said, quoting two previous rulings related to January 6th and the attempt to keep individuals off of the ballot because of it, “an individual citizen does not have standing to challenge whether another individual is qualified to hold public office.”
Caplan is yet to comment on the dismissal of his lawsuit. In a late August interview, however, he said, “The 14th amendment is very clear that you do not need a conviction. You need to be accused and obviously there has to be a rationale for the accusation. I read the amendment and I read the facts of the indictment, and they match very closely.”
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Another state had bad news for those attempting to use the amendment to keep Trump off of the ballot as well. Arizona’s Democrat Secretary of State Adrian Fontes just announced that Arizona state law prohibits the use of the Fourteenth Amendment to keep Trump off the Arizona ballot.
Fontes said, “Now, the Arizona Supreme Court said that because there’s no statutory process in federal law to enforce Section 3 of the 14th amendment, you can’t enforce it. That’s what the Arizona Supreme Court said, so that’s the state of the law in Arizona. Now, do I agree with that? No, that’s stupid What I’m saying is I’m going to follow the law. And the law in Arizona is what the law in Arizona is. Whether I like it or not, is irrelevant.”