Supreme court rules insurrection clause bars local official despite sparing Trump

The US supreme court declined an appeal on Monday from a former New Mexico county commissioner who was removed from office for his role in the January 6 attack, leaving intact a significant decision that enforced a constitutional ban on insurrectionists holding office.

The commissioner, Couy Griffin, is the only US public official thus far who has been removed from office for his role in the January 6 attack. Citing language in the 14th amendment that bars insurrectionists from holding office, a New Mexico judge removed him in 2022 after he was convicted of trespassing on the Capitol grounds. The New Mexico supreme court dismissed an initial appeal in the state.

The US supreme court’s decision not to revisit the case comes two weeks after they said states could not use the 14th amendment to bar Trump from running for president absent legislation from Congress. While the supreme court said states cannot use the 14th amendment to disqualify people from federal office, it made it clear that “States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office.”

The court gave no reason for its decision to reject Griffin’s appeal and there were no noted dissents. Griffin said he was disappointed in the court’s decision.

“It’s a disappointment like I haven’t felt in a long time,” he wrote in a text message. “As I sit right now the only office I can run for is the executive office. Trump needs a vice president who can stand strong through the hardest of times. And I can only pray I’d be considered.”

Griffin’s case was widely seen as one of the first tests of whether the language on the 14th amendment, drafted in the 19th century after the civil war, could be applied to actions taken on 6 January.

He was one of three commissioners in Otero county, which has about 69,000 people and sits on the border with Texas. Trump overwhelmingly won the county in 2020. As a member of the body responsible for certifying the election, Griffin encouraged David Clements, a well-known election denier, to question election results in the county. In 2022, he and the other commissioners refused to certify the election, citing vague concerns of voter fraud. The New Mexico secretary of state sued the county to force them to certify the election, which they eventually did.

Griffin was also the co-founder of the group Cowboys for Trump, and recruited people as part of a bus tour to come to Washington on 6 January. He appeared at events alongside violent groups and tried to normalize the idea of using violence to stay in power, Judge Francis Mathew wrote in his decision removing Griffin from office.

“By refusing to take up this appeal, the Supreme Court keeps in place the finding that January 6 was an insurrection, and ensures that states can still apply the 14th Amendment’s disqualification clause to state officials,” said Noah Bookbinder, the president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew), a non-profit that backed the effort to remove Griffin.

“Crucially, this decision reinforces that every decision-making body that has substantively considered the issue has found that January 6 was an insurrection, and Donald Trump engaged in that insurrection. Now it is up to the states to fulfill their duty under Section 3 to remove from office anyone who broke their oath by participating in the January 6 insurrection.”