Louisiana has become the latest state asked to judge whether Donald Trump should be on their ballot, after a woman from the New Orleans suburbs filed a law suit echoing those filed in multiple other states.
Ashley Reeb, from Chalmette, filed the suit on December 22 in East Baton Rouge Parish, seeking to keep Trump off their state’s March primary ballot.
As with other lawsuits nationwide, Reeb argues that Trump’s actions on January 6, 2021 amounted to insurrection, and therefore disqualify him from the presidency.
In Colorado, the state Supreme Court ruled on December 19 Trump was ineligible to be on the ballot. The case is expected to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
States across the country are seeing lawsuits seeking to remove Donald Trump from the ballot in the primaries, accusing him of having engaged in an insurrection on January 6, 2021 and thus being ineligible to hold office
Trump supporters are seen on January 6, 2021 smashing their way onto the Capitol
The then-president’s followers are seen inside the Capitol, having stormed the building
Reeb’s lawsuit follows a similar wording to that in Colorado and elsewhere.
‘Both Trump’s actions (engaging in insurrection) as well as his inaction (giving aid and comfort to insurrectionists) on Jan. 6, 2021, disqualify him from holding any office of/under the United States,’ Reeb’s lawsuit states.
Her case is filed against Louisiana’s secretary of state, Kyle Ardoin.
Reeb, whose social media is filled with posts lamenting the January 6 unrest, said that she was inspired by the conservative legal scholar J. Michael Luttig, who said the argument in favor of striking Trump from the ballot was ‘unassailable’.
‘I have a massive respect for Judge Luttig,’ she wrote on Facebook.
‘Understanding this is what is driving my actions.’
Trump supporters are pictured on January 6, 2021 scaling the walls of the Capitol
Analysts are split on whether the legal arguments around Article 14 and Trump’s actions are sound.
But Robert Collins, a political analyst at Dillard University, told Fox News he thought Reeb’s petition was ‘a very long shot.’
He pointed out that Trump has been impeached and faces federal trial for trying to subvert the election, but has not been criminally convicted.
‘It might be a different situation if he had been criminally convicted in a court of law of insurrection,’ he said.
‘To make an interpretation that a president had engaged in insurrection, and to remove him from the ballot, I think most judges ideologically are just not there.’
LSU political science professor James Stoner agreed that the lack of a conviction likely undermines the petition.
‘The whole meaning of the rule of law is that a prosecutor can’t just jail you because he thinks you’ve done something wrong,’ Stoner said.
‘That’s only the first step. The prosecutor makes the charge and then it has to go to trial. That’s what happened with the Trump impeachment. The impeachment is a prosecution, but he was not convicted of those offenses.’
To date, no other court has sided with those who have filed dozens of lawsuits to disqualify Trump under Section 3, nor has any election official been willing to remove him from the ballot unilaterally without a court order.
On Wednesday, a court in Michigan ruled that Trump could remain on the ballot – effectively giving the opposite decision to the Colorado judges.