First person to be disqualified and removed from office under 14.3 in consequence of the January 6th insurrection. Additionally, he is disqualified from running for any public office, Federal, State or Local, unless Congress, by a 2/3rds vote of both Houses, removes the disability. Neither can he hold any appointive office under the United States or any State.
Couy Griffin has already been tried and convicted in Federal Court and served his 14 day sentence.
But this move will certainly bring a higher level of accountability for those who broke their Oaths to support the United States Constitution and instead chose to engage in insurrection against the United States.
Sept 6 (Reuters) - A New Mexico county commissioner became the first public official to lose their job for participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol when a state judge on Tuesday ruled that the Republican violated the U.S. Constitution by engaging in an insurrection.
WASHINGTON – A New Mexico state district court judge on Tuesday disqualified county commissioner and Cowboys for Trump co-founder Couy Griffin from office under the 14th Amendment, making him the first public official in more than 50 years to be barred from serving under a constitutional ban on insurrectionists holding office.
The lawsuit against Griffin was brought by three plaintiffs in New Mexico with assistance from the Washington-based Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics.
Supportive briefs were filed by the NAACP and progressive watchdog group Common Cause. A federal court declined a recent request to take up the case.
Is this another case of weaponizing our judicial system? This one state judge can declare on his own, this was an insurrection when no one has been charged, prosecuted and a jury declaring them guilty of an insurrection?
I would hope he would appeal all the way to the Supreme Court. It’s a bad precedent to have some politically oriented local judge deciding that people should be barred from office under an insurrection against the US when none has been declared. The potential abuse is obvious. Any act of illegality associated with a protest can be declared an insurrection by a judge of the opposite ideology.
And the key issue is the meaning of insurrection in the 14th amendment. That is clearly a federal question.
Section 3 Disqualification from Holding Office
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
So in addition to “insurrection” it lists “rebellion against the same”. IMHO the rebellion clause might apply here.
Any rebellion would have been a rebellion against the United States, not the state of New Mexico. This is an issue for the Federal, not state, government to decide.
Of course, Griffin needs to find a lawyer pretty quickly to handle this. One can always accept and just lets one’s rights be taken away.
I don’t know if this link will work directly, it is to the case record. I was able to look up the case record, but unable to download any documents, including the memorandum decision.
However, I did see that Griffin attempted to remove the case to the United States District Court for the District of New Mexico, but the D.N.M. remanded the case back to the State Court.
Interestingly, Federal Trial Courts did not gain Federal Question Jurisdiction until 1875. States have had Federal Question Jurisdiction from day one in 1789 and retain Federal Question Jurisdiction, concurrently with the Federal Courts, to the present.
The United States Supreme Court almost never exercises interlocutory jurisdiction in State cases. Therefore, this case must work its way through the New Mexico Courts and a final judgement rendered in the New Mexico Supreme Court, before the United States Supreme Court even takes the first look at this case. Most likely that will be well into the Supreme Courts October 2023 Term. And the Supreme Court is unlikely to move any faster on this case than they do on any other, so he has a while to wait.
