Fourteenth Amendment
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution - Wikipedia
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
Section 3. 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.
Trump disqualification debate
See also: Federal prosecution of Donald Trump (election obstruction case)
In August 2023, two prominent conservative legal scholars, William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, wrote in a research paper that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment disqualifies Donald Trump from being president as a consequence of his actions involving attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election.[212][213] Conservative legal scholar J. Michael Luttig and liberal legal scholar Laurence Tribe soon concurred in an article they co-wrote, arguing Section 3 protections are automatic and "self-executing", independent of congressional action.[214] Luttig explained the reasoning during television appearances.[215] A court may be required to make a final determination that Trump was disqualified under Section 3, according to some legal scholars.[192][215][216] Some secretaries of state, who oversee elections in states, soon began preparing for potential challenges relating to whether Trump might be excluded from November 2024 ballots.[217][218]
On August 24, 2023, Lawrence Caplan, a tax attorney in Palm Beach County, Florida, filed a challenge in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida to disqualify Trump from the 2024 General Election, citing the 14th Amendment.[219][220] One week later on September 1, United States District Judge Robin L. Rosenberg dismissed the case for lack of standing.[221]
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.