The Illinois Board of Elections unanimously voted to allow Donald Trump to stay on the 2024 presidential primary ballot. The court dismissed another challenge to the former president’s eligibility under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment also known as the insurrection clause.
The lawsuit was brought by a group of Illinois voters who represented the national group Free Speech for the People and Illinois elections lawyers. The elections board rejected their case, stating that it lacked the authority to decide on the challenge.
The hearing officer for the board, retired Republican Kankakee County Judge Clark Erickson, issued a report finding that, while Trump engaged in insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, Illinois Supreme Court precedent prevents the state’s Board of Elections from conducting the “significant and sophisticated constitutional analysis” needed to rule on removing Trump from the ballot.
The case cited Trump’s push to overturn his 2020 election loss and accused him of inciting the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol, where Congress was gathered to certify Joe Biden as the next president. Trump denies all wrongdoing and has previously attacked the 14th Amendment cases as anti-democratic.
Trump celebrated the board’s ruling and said it was “protecting the Citizens of our Country from the Radical Left Lunatics who are trying to destroy it.”
“Trump did not engage in insurrection, as that term is used in the Constitution,” Trump’s attorney Adam Merrill said on Tuesday. “It is a complicated legal term that has been rarely interpreted and wasn’t even articulated correctly by the hearing officer in this case.”
Numerous 14th Amendment challenges to Trump’s eligibility have been reviewed across various entities in the past year. Only the Colorado Supreme Court and Maine’s Secretary of State have found Trump ineligible for their primary process. The Maine case awaits reconsideration by Secretary Shenna Bellows pending the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on the Colorado case.
