The Court dismissed Growe’s petition without addressing the Fourteenth Amendment argument. Rather, the Court held that it’s up to the parties to determine the candidates that are to appear on Minnesota’s primary ballot even if the candidate is ineligible for office. The Court reserved the Fourteenth Amendment issue to resolve later in the event that Trump becomes the Republican candidate for president in the general election. The Court’s order dismissing Growe’s petition is posted online here.
I think the underlying idea is that the United States Supreme Court may resolve the issue in other litigation and save the Minnesota Supreme Court the trouble. If not, the Minnesota Supreme Court will deal with it when the time (or the issue) is “ripe.” As King Lear puts it in Shakespeare’s greatest play, “ripeness is all.”
[Gutless. I had assumed that the court addressed this on the merits rather than punt on ripeness when I first saw the headline late yesterday. But is it really the Minnesota supreme court’s petition that parties can place ineligible candidates on primary ballots? If the MN GOP put Arnold Schwarzenegger on the ballot, they’d allow it even though he’s not a natural-born citizen of the US? That seems like a very strange argument, and I think the 14th Amendment challenge is ridiculous. — Ed]
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