A federal district court in Rhode Island on Monday rejected a bid to disqualify former President Donald Trump from candidacy in the 2024 presidential elections, citing an earlier ruling by an appeals court that rejected a similar claim.
Chief Judge John J. McConnell of the U.S. District Court in Rhode Island on Monday summarily dismissed a complaint by John Anthony Castro, a lesser-known Republican presidential candidate from Texas, who sought to disqualify President Trump from the ballot.
That marked another defeat for Mr. Castro, who has filed lawsuits in more than two dozen states over the past few months, including the one in Rhode Island that was dismissed today, to disqualify Trump from the ballot for the 2024 presidential election.
In recent months, courts in Florida, Colorado, New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Michigan have dismissed his claims, mostly for procedural or jurisdictional reasons, such as a lack of standing or the courts’ refraining from ruling on a political question.
In that earlier ruling, the appeals court affirmed a lower court’s ruling and rejected Mr. Castro’s bid to remove President Trump from the New Hampshire ballot for the 2024 presidential election. The judges reasoned that Mr. Castro failed to show that he suffered “injury in fact”—a required component for bringing the case under Section Three—by Trump’s candidacy, because Mr. Castro’s claim that his votes would be taken away during the 2024 election (should President Trump run) is “too speculative” as of the time Mr. Castro filed his complaint.
The appeals court also affirmed the lower court’s reasoning that the case is a political subject that falls out of the types of matters that a court can adjudicate, but did not elaborate on this point.
President Trump’s spokesperson, Steven Cheung, touted Monday’s ruling as a victory for the former president’s campaign.
“The American People have the unassailable right to vote for the candidate of their choosing at the ballot box, something the Democrats and their allies driving these cases clearly disagree with. President Trump believes the American voters, not the courts, should decide who wins next year’s elections and we urge a swift dismissal of all such remaining bogus ballot challenges.”
Mr. Castro did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday.
Legal Scholars Diverge
Legal scholars have disagreed on whether President Trump, the front-running Republican presidential candidate, should be disqualified from running by Section Three.The Colorado Lawsuit
Courts from around the country, citing jurisdictional issues, have generally refrained from commenting on the merits of disqualification cases against President Trump; with the exception of a court in Colorado, where District Judge Sarah B. Wallace wrote that President Trump, despite having “engaged in insurrection,” still should not be disqualified because his prior role as president falls out of the scope of Section Three of the 14th amendment.Judge Wallace’s opinion prompted both the plaintiff in the case, voters represented by the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and President Trump to appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court—for separate reasons. President Trump’s lawyers took issue with Judge Wallace’s interpretation that the former President had engaged in insurrection, while the plaintiffs disagreed with her ruling that Section Three does not apply to President Trump.