Raskin: SCOTUS 'Punted' on Trump Ballot — 'It's Up to Congress to Act'

Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said Tuesday on CNN's “Newsroom” that the Supreme Court unanimously overturning a Colorado Supreme Court ruling that disqualified former President Donald Trump from the ballot was SCOTUS punting.

Raskin said, “The, court didn't exactly disagree with it. They just said that they're not the ones to figure it out. It's not going to be a matter for judicial resolution under Section Three of the 14th Amendment, but it's up to Congress to enforce it. I disagree with that interpretation just because the other parts of the 14th Amendment are self executing. People can go to court and say that something violates equal protection, even if there's not a federal statute that allows them to do that. But any event, the Supreme Court punted and said, it's up to Congress to act.”

He continued, “And so I am working with a number of my colleagues, including Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Eric Swalwell, to revive legislation that we had to set up a process by which we could determine that someone who committed insurrection is disqualified by section three of the 14th Amendment and the House of Representatives already impeached Donald Trump for participating in insurrection by inciting it. So the House has already pronounced upon that, and there was also a 57 to 43 vote in the Senate. The question is whether speaker Mike Johnson would allow us to bring this to the floor of the House?”

Raskin added, “Obviously the Supreme Court did not want to step up to the plate and deal with the clear textualist meaning of Section Three of the 14th Amendment, much less did they want to deal with the original purposes of Section Three of the 14th Amendment, which was to keep off of keep out of federal office, people who had already proven themselves disloyal and untrustworthy.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

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