A district judge has thrown out a lawsuit that sought to bar Senator Johnson of Wisconsin, along with two House Republicans, from seeking re-election on 14th Amendment grounds due to their support for overturning the results of the 2020 election. The judge dismissed the case for being procedurally improper.

The ruling is the latest blow to legal efforts by plaintiffs around the country to disqualify from office Republicans deemed “insurrectionists,” on the basis of the 14th Amendment’s prohibition of those who have fomented “insurrection” from holding public office.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, written in the wake of the Civil War, contains a “Disqualification Clause” that prevents those who “having previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof” from holding public office.

This clause has served as the basis for constitutional challenges to a range of candidates, most visibly Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina. Mr. Johnson and Representatives Tom Tiffany and Scott Fitzgerald, all from Wisconsin, faced a similar effort to disqualify. 

Messrs. Tiffany and Fitzgerald both voted against counting the electors in President Biden’s favor from Pennsylvania and Arizona. Mr. Johnson also initially opposed the certification of Arizona’s slate of electors, but signed on following the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The lawsuit against Messrs. Johnson, Tiffany, and Fitzgerald, brought by 10 plaintiffs and funded by the “progressive beer” company Minocqua Brewing Company, claims that the congressmen and senator spread “malicious falsehoods about a ‘rigged election’ through regular and social media and at public appearances” that led “thousands of people” to take the law “into their own hands.”

In tossing the case, Judge Lynn Adelman of the Eastern District of Wisconsin ruled that the case should have been filed before the Wisconsin Elections Commission, not in federal court. Judge Adelman declined to hear the case on its merits, refusing to issue a ruling on whether the defendants “engaged in an insurrection or rebellion against the United States.” 

“The plaintiff’s suit is procedurally improper,” Judge Adelman ruled. “If a voter believes that a candidate is ineligible for office, he or she may seek legal redress from election administrators. However, a voter may not seek legal relief relating to the candidate’s eligibility for office against the candidate directly.”

The ruling is another setback for an ongoing campaign to disqualify Republicans in Congress who participated in attempts to overturn the result of the 2020 election from holding office under the Disqualification Clause.  

The same provision was used to challenge the qualifications of Mr. Cawthorn, who was bested in the Republican primary for his House seat.  

The Sun reported that the riders of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit determined that Mr. Cawthorn’s primary loss did not preclude him from being disqualified from office under the clause. However, the court did not rule on the merits of the insurrection charges in his case, either.

The challenge to Ms. Greene generated a more substantive discussion of the insurrection claim. In May, a state administrative judge, Charles Beaudrot, ruled that statements by the Georgia congresswoman urging the overturning of the 2020 election result fell short of urging a violent insurrection. They were not, in his words, “a call to arms for consummation of a pre-planned violent revolution.”

Another 14th Amendment lawsuit, against Representatives Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs, and Mark Finchem of Arizona, was dismissed in April, on the grounds that in the absence of a criminal charge, insurrection cannot be the basis for electoral disqualification.