Oregon Supreme Court Won’t Remove Trump From Ballot ‘For Now’

Former President Donald Trump sits in the courtroom with attorneys Christopher Kise and Alina Habba during his civil fraud trial at New York State Supreme Court in New York City on Nov. 6, 2023. Brendan McDermid-Pool/Getty Images

The Oregon Supreme Court on Friday declined to hear a 14th Amendment-related case to remove former President Donald Trump from the state’s ballots, saying it will wait for a U.S. Supreme Court decision before taking any action.

In a one-page statement, the state’s top court wrote that it would not “for now” hear a challenge issued by five Oregon voters seeking to bar the former president from ballot access in the 2024 Republican primary and general election.

The voters had asked the court to direct the Oregon secretary of state to disqualify the former president under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, although the secretary, Democrat Lavonne Griffin-Valade, wrote she had no authority under state law to do so.

Because the U.S. Supreme Court took up an appeal of a decision handed down last month by the Colorado Supreme Court to block President Trump from appearing on state ballots, the Oregon Supreme Court noted that the arguments presented in the court decision “are identical to some arguments advanced by” the voters. The Colorado high court had ruled that the 14th Amendment’s Section 3 bars individuals who have engaged in an “insurrection or rebellion” from appearing on state ballots.

A majority of the Colorado court’s judges had argued that they believed the former president engaged in an insurrection relating to the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The former president has not been charged with or convicted of carrying out an insurrection against the U.S. government.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court said last week that it would review the Colorado Supreme Court decision. Justices are slated to hear arguments in that case on Feb. 8.

“Oregon’s presidential primary ballots must be finalized by March 21, 2024. Because a decision by the United States Supreme Court regarding the Fourteenth Amendment issue may resolve one or more contentions that [the voters] make in the Oregon proceeding, the Oregon Supreme Court denied their petition for mandamus, by order, but without prejudice to their ability to file a new petition seeking resolution of any issue that may remain following a decision by the United States Supreme Court,” the Oregon Supreme Court wrote Friday.

Ms. Griffin-Valade argued in November that no provision under Oregon law gives her the capacity to “determine the qualifications of candidates in a presidential primary,” adding that she only has the ability to make such a determination in the 2024 general election. “I will follow our usual process and expect to put Donald Trump on the primary ballot unless a court directs me otherwise,” she said at the time.

“I understand that people want to skip to the end of this story. But right now, we don’t even know who the nominee will be,” she added. “When the general election comes, we’ll follow the law and be completely transparent with our reasoning.”

Maine’s Democrat secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, also determined last month that President Trump is ineligible for the state’s primary ballot under similar pretexts. But she paused her decision to allow him to appeal the decision.

Other Challenges

More than a dozen lawsuits have been filed in 2023 seeking to end President Trump’s presidential candidacy under interpretations of the 14th Amendment.

Other legal challenges against President Trump in Michigan, Minnesota, and other states have failed, with Michigan’s Supreme Court arguing that he followed the law when he entered the 2024 race. In recent days, courts in Nevada and California have issued similar rulings to allow him to remain on their respective ballots, too.

In California, District Judge David Carter granted a motion to dismiss a lawsuit against President Trump “with prejudice,” which means that it can’t be submitted to the same court again, according to court papers filed in January.

Several other federal judges have also dismissed attempts to block the former president from appearing on ballots. In a ruling issued in late December 2023, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema wrote that the plaintiffs—two activists—who filed suit against President Trump in Virginia to keep him on that state’s ballot, lacked standing.

Earlier in the week, Judge Gloria Navarro determined that a longshot GOP presidential candidate who attempted to block President Trump from the ballot in the state did not have legal standing to file the lawsuit in Nevada.

“To have standing to sue in federal court, a plaintiff must have suffered a concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent injury in fact that was caused by the defendant’s challenged conduct and is redressable by a favorable decision,” Judge Navarro wrote in the ruling.

Ahead of the U.S. Supreme Court appeal, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said that “unsurprisingly, the all-Democrat-appointed Colorado Supreme Court has ruled against President Trump, supporting a Soros-funded, left-wing group’s scheme to interfere in an election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden by removing President Trump’s name from the ballot and eliminating the rights of Colorado voters to vote for the candidate of their choice.”