Disqualifying insurrectionists from public office? NC has done it before | Opinion

Colorado and Maine have taken the rare step of removing Donald Trump from the Republican presidential primary ballot based on a provision of the 14th Amendment that disqualifies insurrectionists from holding public office.

The provision states that any elected official who took an oath to uphold the Constitution may be disqualified from holding office again if they violated that oath by engaging in insurrection or rebellion against the United States. Colorado and Maine have argued that Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 insurrection was a violation of that oath.

The provision has only been formally used a handful of times throughout history, mostly to prevent Confederate soldiers and officers from occupying public office after the Civil War. As it happens, at least three of those instances occurred right here in North Carolina.

One of those instances was the result of a North Carolina Supreme Court case, which has been cited as precedent in many legal filings seeking to disqualify Trump from the ballot. That case, Worthy v. Barrett, was decided in 1869. At the center of the case was Kenneth Worthy, who at the time was sheriff of Moore County. Upon his reelection in 1868, county commissioners refused to swear him in on 14th Amendment grounds, because he had held that office during the Confederacy. Worthy took his case to the state Supreme Court hoping it would lead to him being sworn in, but the court sided with the commissioners.

“The idea being that one who had taken an oath to support the Constitution and violated it, ought to be excluded from taking it again, until relieved by Congress,” the court stated in its ruling.

That same year, the court upheld the disqualification of William Tate, who was seeking to become a solicitor in the 12th Judicial District. Tate had served as a Confederate soldier while he was a county attorney.

The third North Carolinian who was barred from taking office under the 14th Amendment has a name that may be familiar: Zebulon B. Vance.

Vance, a well-known congressman, was a Confederate officer and became governor of North Carolina during the Civil War. In 1870, he successfully ran for the U.S. Senate, but his opponent challenged the legitimacy of the election under the 14th Amendment. The Senate debated whether to seat him for more than a year, ultimately leading Vance to submit his resignation. He did eventually end up in the Senate, though, after President Ulysses S. Grant signed a bill granting amnesty to most former Confederates who had been barred from taking office.

While no presidential candidate has ever been disqualified under the 14th Amendment, there is some precedent for disqualifying insurrectionists, at least in North Carolina. Still, don’t expect Trump to be removed from North Carolina’s ballot — at least not if Republicans have anything to say about it. The North Carolina State Board of Elections already declined to consider a challenge to Trump’s candidacy from the primary ballot but seemingly left the door open to disqualification challenges in November’s general election. Their decision has been appealed to state court.

NC lawmakers have expressed an interest in passing legislation that would ban the State Board of Elections from being able to disqualify candidates for office. In a statement, GOP leaders said “removing a leading candidate in this race like President Trump would be an affront to democracy.”

Can lawmakers prevent such disqualifications? Yes, because the process for disqualifying a candidate from the ballot in North Carolina is laid out in state law. Because that process was created by the legislature, the legislature also has the ability to change it.

Similarly, at the federal level, North Carolina’s Sen. Thom Tillis led introduction of a bill that would prevent state politicians and other state entities from disqualifying presidential candidates from the ballot like in Maine and Colorado. Such decisions could only be made by the U.S. Supreme Court, the legislation says, and federal funding for election administration would be withheld from states that “misuse the 14th Amendment for political purposes.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has already agreed to review the Colorado decision in the coming months. We’ll see if any of North Carolina’s history makes it into their ruling.