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A Wyoming judge has denied a motion to remove Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 presidential ballot on the grounds that he is unable to serve a second term as president under the 14th Amendment.
Albany County District Court Judge Misha Westby issued the decision on Thursday, saying the matter was “dismissed without prejudice.”
Conservative lawyer Harmeet Dhillon posted two papers from the verdict on X, formerly Twitter, adding, “Not again! Yes, once again…Today, a federal judge in Wyoming rejected yet another 14th Amendment lawsuit. Bye!”
Tim Newcomb, a retired attorney, filed the Wyoming case against Trump and Senator Cynthia Lummis, a Republican from the state who refused to declare Joe Biden’s election victory, on November 1, 2023.
It sought to “preclude the names of Mr. Trump and Ms. Lummis from appearing on Wyoming ballots…and award reasonable attorney fees and costs incurred in prosecuting this action.” Newsweek has reached out to representatives of Donald Trump for comment by email.
Trump, who polls show is the overwhelming favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, has already been taken from the primary ballots in Colorado and Maine under the 14th Amendment, but his team is appealing both decisions to the Supreme Court.
If the Supreme Court upholds one of the verdicts, it will immediately destabilize the Republican presidential primary campaign, a move unprecedented in modern American history.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment stipulates that anyone who has previously sworn an oath to “support the Constitution of the United States” and “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” is ineligible to occupy “any office, civil or military” in the country. Trump’s detractors say that his purported attempt to alter the 2020 presidential election outcome, including his alleged role in the January 6 storming of Congress, constituted an insurrection, and that he is, therefore, unable to serve as president again.
In a 4-3 judgment on December 19, the Colorado Supreme Court found that Trump is unable to appear on the state’s primary ballot since his conduct around January 6, 2021 “constituted overt, voluntary, and direct participation in the insurrection.”
Just days later, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, reached the same conclusion, concluding that Trump “used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters and direct them to the Capitol to prevent certification of the 2020 election and the peaceful transfer of power.”
The moves triggered a furious response from Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung, who said: “Make no mistake, these partisan election interference efforts are a hostile assault on American democracy. Biden and the Democrats simply do not trust the American voter in a free and fair election and are now relying on the force of government institutions to protect their grip on power.”
Alina Habba, a lawyer for Trump, suggested this week that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh will “step up” and rule in favor of the 45th president in the Colorado 2024 ballot decision.
In an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Habba singled out Kavanaugh as one of the nine justices who should vote in favor of Trump in a potential decision on whether to overturn the Colorado Supreme Court’s December ruling that barred the former president from running for office in the state.
“It should be a slam dunk in the Supreme Court. I have faith in them. People like Kavanaugh, who the president fought for, who the president went through hell to get into place, he’ll step up,” Habba said. “Those people will step up not because they’re pro-Trump, but because they’re pro-law, because they’re pro-fairness, and the law on this is very clear.”
Republicans are lining up behind Trump, calling the decision by the Colorado Supreme Court wrong and unprecedented.
