Judge dismisses 14th Amendment lawsuit against Trump, rules plaintiffs lack standing.
In her swift dismissal of the case, Judge Robin Rosenberg, who was appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama, ruled that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the challenge.
A federal court judge in Fort Lauderdale on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit challenging Donald Trump's 2024 presidential candidacy under the 14th Amendment.
The lawsuit, filed a week ago, questioned Trump's ability to appear on the Florida presidential primary ballot next year, owing to his alleged role in the Jan. 6 violence at the U.S. Capitol.
In her swift dismissal of the case, Judge Robin Rosenberg, who was appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama, did not determine the 14th Amendment's applicability in Trump's case. Instead, Rosenberg ruled that the plaintiffs, Boynton Beach attorney Lawrence Caplan and two others, lacked "standing" to bring the challenge.
"Plaintiffs lack standing to challenge Defendant’s qualifications for seeking the Presidency," Rosenberg wrote, adding that "the injuries alleged" from the insurrection on Capitol Hill more than two years ago "are not cognizable and not particular to them."
Rosenberg also added that "an individual citizen does not have standing to challenge whether another individualis qualified to hold public office." She noted two prior court rulings against plaintiffs trying to keep candidates off the ballot because they participated in the Jan. 6 violence in Washington, D.C.
Caplan did not comment on the judge's ruling Thursday. But in an Aug. 25 interview with the USA TODAY-Florida network, Caplan said he believed his lawsuit would most likely be challenged on the issue of standing, perhaps because he was not, say, a candidate who could argue direct harm.
But he insisted in that interview that it didn't require profound knowledge of the U.S. Constitution to see why Trump is ineligible in light of Jan. 6.
"The 14th amendment is very clear that you do not need a conviction. You need to be accused and obviously there has to be a rationale for the accusation," Caplan said at the time. "I read the amendment and I read the facts of the indictment, and they match very closely."
Rosenberg's decision comes as other states and legal minds are closely scrutinizing Trump's eligibility under the post-Civil War, Reconstruction-era constitutional amendment.
The New Hampshire attorney general's office said this week it is "carefully reviewing the legal issues" presented by the amendment and Trump's 2024 campaign for the Republican nomination.
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Last week, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said in an interview on MSNBC that she has held talks with election officials in other states about the potential challenges to Trump's placement on the ballot. Benson said that when "the time is right," she would seek an opinion from Michigan's attorney general.
She expects that a constitutional challenge to Trump's candidacy will be litigated and that the courts will have the "final say" on the outcome. But added she had already had talks with her counterparts in Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Arizona.
But in Arizona, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said he did not have the legal right to scratch Trump off the ballot. In Utah, Republican U.S. Sen. Mark Lee reportedly has said he also does not think Trump's name can be kept off.
Legal scholars, state elections officials also mulling potential implementation of the 14th Amendment
Retired conservative federal judge J. Michael Luttig and liberal constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe on Aug. 19 wrote an article for The Atlantic in which they delineated reasons why the 14th Amendment disqualification should be applied to Trump.
Also in August, law professors William Baude of the University of Chicago and Michael Stokes Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas wrote a detailed 126-page report explaining why the 14th Amendment applies to Trump.
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Intriguingly, both Baude and Paulsen are active members of the conservative Federalist Society, which has been a principal player in ushering forward conservative jurists across the United States, including on both the U.S. and Florida high courts.
Antonio Fins is a politics and business editor at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at afins@pbpost.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.