The Fourth District Court of Appeals has overturned a lower court ruling tossing the 14th Amendment challenge to Madison Cawthorn’s ability to hold public office.  The ruling, which throws out a lower court ruling claiming the 14th Amendment no longer applies, provides states the opportunity to determine if a candidate for federal office meets state-level qualifications.

As legal opinions go, this is a fun one.  For background, a lower court ruled that North Carolina elections boards did not have the power or authority to determine if Madison Cawthorn could be excluded from the ballot for being a supporter of the insurrection that occurred on January 6th.  That lower court ruled that an amnesty issued by Congress in 1872 for rank-and-file Confederates nullified the “insurrectionist” exclusion for eligibility for elected office.

The Fourth District’s ruling basically eviscerated that lower court opinion.  The opinion states that it’s clear that the 1872 amnesty was meant for people who had previously acted against the United States; it was not a blanket amnesty for anyone who tried to topple the nation’s Constitution after the Civil War.  Cawthorn–or should I more accurately say, the lawyers for the college drop out–seriously argued that that legislation gave carte blanche to anyone who would attempt to overthrow the government in the future, which is obviously insane. 

The lower court also claimed that Congress was the only body that could determine the eligibility of one of its members to sit in one of the chambers, with the Senate and the House respectively responsible for policing their own members.  This was based on Article 1 Section 5 of the Constitution, which notes that the two bodies can punish and expel its members, essentially treating candidates for office the same as members of Congress, and leaving the determination of their eligibility or qualification for office up to Congress after an election.

The Fourth’s opinion states that this claim is faulty on its face.  If this were true, the opinion reads, no state board of elections would be able to exclude a plainly ineligible candidate from the ballot.  The state, according to the lower court ruling, would not have the power to exclude, as examples, someone from the ballot who was too young, who did not meet state residency requirements, or who had a disqualifying criminal conviction.

This is obviously not the case, as all 50 states have individual requirements for office.

If the concurring opinion is correct that ‘any attempt’ by the States ‘to regulate candidates or ballot access for federal office is an implicit attempt to regulate the qualifications of members of Congress, which is not allowed,’ then every ‘state would be powerless to prevent’ ‘fraudulent or unqualified candidates such as minors, out-of-state residents, or foreign nationals’ from running for office.  It is hard to believe the State legislatures that ratified the Constitution signed up for such a charade.  [Case citations deleted.]

So what does this mean?  Well, for one, Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz should be changing their shorts right now.  It allows for challenges to candidates’ campaigns to be challenged by any voter in the appropriate electoral district based on their support of an insurgency to undermine the Constitution of the United States.  It reinitiates the ability of voters to sue to have candidates taken off the ballot for actions to support an insurrection.  It puts the determination of such actions into the hands of state and local elections boards, not the courts.  And it defeats the claims from members of Congress that their actions cannot impact their eligibility for office.