The North Carolina Board of Elections said earlier this week that it has the authority to ban Rep. Madison Cawthorn, a bombastic Republican, from running for re-election.
The board’s assertion, made in a court filing, is the latest development in a legal effort to prevent Cawthorn from holding public office.
A group of liberal lawyers filed a suit last month claiming that the 26 year-old violated the 14th Amendment when he participated in the January 6th insurrection.
The New York Times explains:
[The third section of the 14th amendment] declares that “no person shall” hold “any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath” to “support the Constitution,” had then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
Cawthorn can be considered an insurrectionists, the lawsuit argues, because of a series of public statements he made implicitly encouraging violence. Cawthorn, for example, was among the speakers at the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally that preceded the Capitol attack. He praised the crowd for having “some fight.” Later, he encouraged supporters to stockpile “ammunition” to prepare for the coming “bloodshed” over “stolen” elections.
Last week, Cawthorn filed his own lawsuit, arguing that the North Carolina Board of Elections is not empowered to block him from running and, consequently, the effort to ban him from the ballot is invalid.
In a court filing, the board pushed back on that notion, writing “States have long enforced age and residency requirements, without question and with very few if any legal challenges. The State has the same authority to police which candidates should or should not be disqualified per Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
The legal wrangling will likely not advance until North Carolina redraws its Congressional maps and Cawthorn can officially declare what new district he seeks to represent.