Maine Judge Suspends Decision to Exclude Trump From Primary Ballot

A Maine judge ordered the state’s top election official on Wednesday to wait for a U.S. Supreme Court ruling before putting into effect her decision to exclude former President Donald J. Trump from Maine’s Republican primary ballot.

Justice Michaela Murphy of Maine Superior Court said in the ruling that the official, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, had been forced under Maine law to rule quickly, without the benefit of the high court’s input.

The Supreme Court has agreed to review, at Mr. Trump’s request, an earlier decision by a Colorado court to exclude him from the ballot, and is expected to hear arguments in the case on Feb. 8. Ms. Bellows had cited the Colorado court’s reasoning in her decision.

“The secretary confronted an uncertain legal landscape when she issued her ruling,” Justice Murphy wrote in a 17-page decision, and “should be afforded the opportunity to assess the effect and application” to her ruling of whatever the high court decides.

She added: “Put simply, the United States Supreme Court’s acceptance of the Colorado case changes everything about the order in which these issues should be decided, and by which court.”

Maine is unusual in requiring that its secretary of state rule on ballot eligibility questions before the courts take them up. Several Maine voters who objected to Mr. Trump’s candidacy had petitioned Ms. Bellows to keep him off the ballot.

They argued in legal briefs and at a hearing last month that the former president was not eligible to hold public office any more, because he engaged in insurrection by encouraging the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

A section of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution — enacted originally to exclude former Confederate officials from serving in the federal government — disqualifies anyone who, after having sworn an oath of office, “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.”

In her decision on Dec. 28, Ms. Bellows, a Democrat elected to her post by state legislators, sided with the voters — a group of three former elected officials who filed one challenge, and an individual resident who filed another based on the same argument. She found Mr. Trump to be ineligible for the presidency, and thus the Maine ballot, because after losing the 2020 election, he used “a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters” in a bid to prevent a peaceful transfer of power.

Her finding made Maine the second state to block Mr. Trump, after Colorado’s highest court reached the same conclusion.

The fate of other ballot challenges filed in states around the country may hinge on the Supreme Court’s decision. Formal challenges have been filed in at least 35 states; though the primary season is already underway, more than half of those states still have unresolved cases.

The Republican primaries in Maine and Colorado are both scheduled for March 5, known as Super Tuesday because many states hold primaries that day.

Lawyers for Mr. Trump appealed Ms. Bellows’s decision to the Maine Superior Court a few days after it was issued, arguing that she had “no legal authority to consider the federal constitutional issues presented by the challengers.” They described her decision as “the product of a process infected by bias.”

A poll by the University of New Hampshire found Maine residents to be sharply divided over Ms. Bellows’s decision, with 85 percent of Democrats expressing support and 95 percent of Republicans opposed. Independent voters were divided about evenly, with 47 percent in favor and 49 percent opposed.

First appointed to the Maine court by Gov. John E. Baldacci, a Democrat, Justice Murphy was reappointed by his successor, Gov. Paul LePage, a Republican.

Justice Murphy’s ruling to delay a decision on Mr. Trump’s ballot eligibility “minimizes any potentially destabilizing effect of inconsistent decisions,” she wrote, “and will promote greater predictability in the weeks ahead of the primary election.”

The court order directs Ms. Bellows to issue a new decision no later than 30 days after the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the Colorado case, “modifying, withdrawing or confirming” her earlier decision to keep Mr. Trump off the ballot.