States Banning Donald Trump Define 'Insurrection' Differently

Two states that moved to bar Donald Trump from their 2024 presidential ballot over his role in the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol have taken somewhat differing views of what counts as an insurrection under the U.S. Constitution.

Maine became the second state to disqualify the former president on Thursday, preventing him from appearing in its primary in March, after Colorado's Supreme Court moved to remove his name from the general election ballot last week. Neither state voted for Trump in 2020, but combined offer 13 electoral college votes he is hoping to contest.

While both states wrote that an insurrection was a "public use of force," in Maine, it was taken as one aimed at "prevent[ing] the execution of the Constitution." In Colorado, it was more narrowly described as attempting to "prevent the U.S. government from taking the actions necessary to accomplish a peaceful transfer of power." It could also include the "threat of force."

The ruling in Colorado has already been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, with the state's Republican Party asking for an expedited process, arguing that the decision "poses a severe, immediate, and ongoing threat to the...electoral process throughout the country."

Lawsuits seeking to remove Trump from the ballot using the same argument have also been filed in 14 other states, while some have been dismissed in five states, including key swing states such as Florida and Michigan.

"It is clear that these decisions are going to keep popping up, and inconsistent decisions reached (like the many states keeping Trump on the ballot over challenges) until there is final and decisive guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court," Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California Los Angeles, told the Associated Press following the latest ruling.

Differences in how insurrection—which Trump is accused of but has denied—is defined between states could form a part of the Supreme Court's deliberations on the matter.

Newsweek reached out to the Supreme Court via email for comment on Friday.

Those bringing the lawsuits argue that Trump's actions during the January 6 uprising—in which he is accused of encouraging his supporters who stormed the Capitol building, which he has refuted—precludes him from being re-elected as president.

They cite Section Three of the 14th Amendment, which bars anyone who swore an oath to the U.S. Constitution and then "engaged in insurrection" from running for elected office.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows referenced the testimony of Gerard Magliocca, a law professor at the University of Indiana, who has previously argued in favor of using the 14th Amendment against Trump and who defined insurrection as "a public use of violence by a group of people to hinder or prevent the execution of the Constitution."

Bellows said this was "well supported by the historical record," citing a dictionary definition that says insurrection is "[a] rising against civil or political authority; the open and active opposition of a number of persons to the execution of law."

She criticized Trump's alternative definition, that insurrection must be "violent enough, potent enough, long enough, and organized enough to be considered a significant step on the way to rebellion," but said the events of January 6 met both definitions.

Bellows argued that "engaged in insurrection" included incitement through words or deeds, which she claimed Trump's public statements leading up to January 6 amounted to.

The Colorado Supreme Court cited the same dictionary definition and wrote that, broadly, an insurrection was designed to "hinder or prevent execution of the Constitution."

However, it said that an insurrection under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment encompassed "a concerted and public use of force or threat of force by a group of people to hinder or prevent the U.S. government from taking the actions necessary to accomplish a peaceful transfer of power."

The court wrote that this threat of force "need not involve bloodshed," nor be "so substantial as to ensure probable success" or those involved "be highly organized at the insurrection's inception."

In response to the ruling in Maine, a Trump spokesperson attacked Bellows as "a virulent leftist and a hyper-partisan Biden-supporting Democrat," adding: "We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter." They vowed to challenge the decision.

Bellows, an elected Democrat, told the Associated Press on Thursday that her decision "was based exclusively on the record presented to me at the hearing and was in no way influenced by my political affiliation or personal views about the events of January 6, 2021."