WASHINGTON. On Friday, a judge blocked a new electoral process that aimed to disqualify North Carolina Representative Madison Cawthorne from running for reelection by calling him a rebel, and issued an equally new order citing a post-Civil War law that pardoned Confederate soldiers. and sympathizers.
U.S. District Judge Richard E. Myers II, appointed by President Donald J. Trump, intervened to quell efforts by lawyers and voters in North Carolina who filed a petition with the state Board of Elections to have 26-year-old Mr. Cawthorne ineligible. for re-election in accordance with the Constitution. They argued that Republican support for the first term of the rebels who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, made him a “rebel” and therefore barred him from office under the little-known third section of the 14th Amendment passed during Reconstruction to punish members of the Confederacy. .
This section declares that “no person shall” hold “any office, civil or military, in the United States or in any State, who, having previously taken an oath” “to uphold the Constitution,” then “participated in an insurrection or rebellion against the same, or aid or comfort to his enemies.”
Justice Myers upheld the argument of James Bopp, Jr., a well-known conservative campaign lawyer, who noted that the third section ended with the proviso: “Congress may, by a two-thirds vote of each House, repeal such a disability.” The Amnesty Act of 1872 did just that, declaring that “all political restrictions imposed by the third section” of the 14th Amendment are “hereby removed from all persons, no matter who they are.”
The ruling angered the lawyers in the case, who argued that the 1872 law applied only to Civil War Confederates and not to any future rebels, and that the law could not usurp the constitutional amendment.
“According to this court order, the Amnesty Act of 1872, through clever language that—though no one noticed it at the time or 150 years later—completely undermined the cautious decision of Congress to write an insurrectionary disqualification clause that would apply to future insurrections. said Ron Fein, legal director of Free Speech for the People, which helped with the case. “This is sheer absurdity.”
But Mr. Bopp said on Friday that since the 14th Amendment applies to past and future uprisings, so does the subsequent amnesty. This was agreed by Judge Myers, a former professor of law at the University of North Carolina and clerk of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
Mr Fein called for an appeal against the decision, but the activists who filed the protest are unable to do so. Because the injunction was directed against the state, only the NC Board of Elections or the state’s attorney general can appeal, and it’s not clear whether either of them will intervene.
The applicants hoped to at least question Mr Cawthorne under oath for his role in fueling the violence that erupted at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and for sympathizing with those who perpetrated it. Mr. Cawthorne urged conservatives to gather in Washington that day for a “Save America” rally outside the White House. He urged Mr. Trump’s supporters to “call your congressman” to protest the official congressional electoral vote count for final approval of the 2020 election results, adding that “you can threaten them a little.” And after the riot, Mr. Cawthorne claimed that those imprisoned for storming the Capitol were “political hostages” whom he would like to “knock” out of jail.
Mr. Cawthorne has asked the federal courts to intervene before the Board of Elections can set a hearing to determine his eligibility to vote.
Efforts to prevent Mr. Cawthorne from running for re-election could now be stopped.
But Mr. Bopp said: “I never underestimate the willingness of lawyers to keep fighting.”