On Monday, the nation’s conservative-majority high court upheld a ban preventing former New Mexico official Couy Griffin from running for office within the state again due to his specific criminal history: In 2022, Griffin was convicted on misdemeanor offenses for his role in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, ultimately costing him his job as county commissioner.
It’s the Supreme Court’s first decision on the Fourteenth Amendment since it axed a Colorado decision earlier this month to keep Trump off the state’s GOP presidential primary ballot, and the first time that the “insurrectionist clause” has been used to bar someone from office since it was created to keep ex-Confederates from reattaining high office following the Civil War. By allowing the Fourteenth Amendment to be used against Griffin, the Supreme Court seems to have, circuitously, deemed the January 6 riot an insurrection.