By Robert GreenallBBC News
ReutersThe Michigan Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal from voters in the US state to disqualify Donald Trump from next year’s presidential primary.
They sought to invoke a clause in the US Constitution prohibiting anyone from engaging in insurrection, regarding Mr Trump’s role in the 2021 Capitol riots.
The move comes days after Colorado became the first state to declare Mr. Trump not an eligible candidate.
Michigan is considered a battleground state for the 2024 general election.
Traditionally Democratic, Michigan narrowly supported Mr. Trump, a Republican, during his successful 2016 presidential campaign. But the state returned to Democrats when Joe Biden won by a margin of nearly 3% in 2020 .
Unlike Colorado, Michigan’s application failed early in the process, and the appeal to the state Supreme Court was considered unlikely to succeed.
Mr. Trump praised the decision on Truth Social on Wednesday, calling it a “pathetic scheme to rig the election.” This decision means that his name will appear on the ballot in the Republican primary, scheduled for February 27.
The pro-democracy advocacy group Free Speech for People filed the lawsuit in September, and the group said in a statement that the ruling was narrow and technical and only applied to the state’s Republican primary.
“However, the Michigan Supreme Court has not ruled out that the issue of Donald Trump’s disqualification for engaging in insurrection against the U.S. Constitution may be resolved at a later stage,” said Ron Fein, legal director. by Free Speech For People.
Michigan’s lower courts dismissed the case on procedural grounds and did not consider whether the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot qualified as an insurrection under the law and whether Mr. Trump had played a role in it.
Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Welch explained that Michigan’s laws are different from Colorado’s.
The appellants “have not identified any analogous provision in Michigan election law that would require any person running for President of the United States to attest to their legal qualification to hold that office,” she wrote.
The Colorado Supreme Court’s 4-3 decision last week, which only refers to the March 5 Republican primary, does not prevent Mr. Trump from running in other states.
In the Colorado case, a lower court judge ruled that Mr. Trump violated Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits public officials “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from exercising federal functions.
This was the first time the Constitution had been used to disqualify a presidential candidate. The amendment was ratified after the American Civil War to prevent Confederate secessionists from returning to power after the southern states returned to the Union.
But legal experts say the ruling will struggle to stand when, as expected, it reached the conservative-leaning United States Supreme Court.
Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s secretary of state — a position that oversees elections, among other things — said the legal questions raised by the 14th Amendment were unclear.
Ms. Benson, a Democrat, also said she believed the issues should ultimately be resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“I continue to hope that they will do so as soon as possible to ensure that we can move forward into the 2024 election season ensuring that all voters are fully informed and universally engaged in deciding the issues at stake,” she declared.
Colorado’s decision was put on hold pending an appeal deadline in January. Similar attempts to keep Mr. Trump off the ballot in New Hampshire and Minnesota failed.
Also on Wednesday, Mr. Trump’s lawyers urged Maine’s secretary of state to recuse herself from a 14th Amendment attempt to exclude Mr. Trump from the ballot in that state. In Maine, election challenges are heard by the Secretary of State in the first instance, not the courts.
Mr. Trump’s campaign claimed that Shenna Bellows, a progressive Democrat, was biased against him. Citing tweets she sent following the 2021 Capitol riot, they claimed she had “already passed judgment on the Challengers’ main claims.”
Ms Bellows is expected to make her decision in the coming days.
