Opinion: Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s North Carolina re-election test case – By Steve Vladeck (MSNBC) / January 15, 2022
One way or the other, the legal challenge to Cawthorn’s 2022 candidacy could therefore have enormous implications.
A group of North Carolina voters filed an unusual legal challenge Monday, asking the North Carolina State Board of Elections to determine whether Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn is eligible to run for re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives later this year.
The issue isn’t whether Cawthorn meets the Constitution’s age and residency requirements; clearly, he does. Rather, the challenge claims that Cawthorn is ineligible by dint of the 14th Amendment’s disqualification clause: a post-Civil War provision that provides that one cannot serve in Congress if you “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to [those engaged in such acts].”
If these allegations are true, the challenge concludes, Cawthorn is constitutionally disqualified from serving in Congress.
Across 34 pages, the complaint alleged that Cawthorn “was involved in efforts to intimidate Congress and the Vice President into rejecting valid electoral votes and subvert the essential constitutional function of an orderly and peaceful transition of power” and “was involved in either planning the attack on January 6, or alternatively the planning of the pre-attack demonstration and/or march on the Capitol with the advance knowledge that it was substantially likely to lead to the attack, and otherwise voluntarily aided the insurrection.” If these allegations are true, the challenge concluded, Cawthorn is constitutionally disqualified from serving in Congress — and, thus, from running for re-election to Congress under North Carolina law.
