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lavonne griffin valade
Oregon Supreme Court Bans From Ballot GOP State Lawmakers Who Staged Walkout
"Oregonians deserve legislators who will show up and do their jobs—and when they don't, there must be consequences," said one advocacy group.
Feb 01, 2024
Oregon's Supreme Court on Thursday disqualified 10 state senators from reelection for participating in last year's Republican-led walkout that paralyzed the Legislature for six weeks, delaying key Democratic bills on abortion, healthcare, and gun control.
The ruling upholds last year's decision by Oregon Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade, a Democrat, barring the 10 lawmakers—nine Republicans and 1 Independent—from the 2024 ballot because they had accumulated more than 10 unexcused absences in violation of Measure 113, a state constitutional amendment approved by 68% of voters in 2022 following a series of Republican walkouts.
"I've said from the beginning my intention was to support the will of the voters," Griffin-Valade said in a statement Thursday. "It was clear to me that voters intended for legislators with a certain number of absences in a legislative session to be immediately disqualified from seeking reelection."
Five of the sanctioned lawmakers challenged Griffin-Valade's interpretation of Measure 113's language stating a lawmaker who misses 10 or more sessions is banned from running in "the term following the election after the member's current term is completed."
As The Associated Press explained:
The debate was over when that ineligibility kicks in: If a senator's term ends in January 2025, they would typically seek reelection in November 2024. The "election after the member's current term is completed" would not be until November 2028, the Republican senators argued, so they could run for reelection this year and then hold office for another term before becoming ineligible.
The court disagreed, saying that while the language of the amendment was ambiguous, the information provided to voters in the ballot title and explanatory statement made clear that the intent was to bar truant lawmakers from holding office in the next term.
"If we were required to choose between petitioners' and the secretary's interpretations based on the text alone, petitioners would have a strong argument that their reading is the better one," the court's opinion states.
"But we do not review the text in a void," the ruling adds. "We instead seek to understand how voters would have understood the text in the light of the other materials that accompanied it. And those other materials expressly and uniformly informed voters that the amendment would apply to a legislator's immediate next terms of office, indicating that the voters so understood and intended that meaning."
The 2023 walkout—which, at six weeks set a record in Oregon—paralyzed the Legislature and held up Democratic-led bills expanding abortion access, protecting gender-affirming healthcare, and banning so-called ghost guns. Oregon is one of only four U.S. states requiring the presence of two-thirds of its state lawmakers for a quorum.
"It is critical to our democracy that elected officials uphold the will of voters, not disrupt our constitutional rights or halt the democratic process when it does not align with their personal beliefs," the ACLU of Oregon said in response to Thursday's ruling.
The Oregon League of Conservation Voters said on social media that "Oregonians deserve legislators who will show up and do their jobs—and when they don't, there must be consequences."
"Voters were clear when they overwhelmingly passed Measure 113, and we're glad the Oregon Supreme Court agrees," the green group added.
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Oregon Voters File Suit to Bar 'Ineligible' Trump From Ballot
"Since Secretary of State Griffin-Valade has announced that Trump will be on the primary ballot unless a court orders otherwise, we are seeking a court order."
Dec 06, 2023
In response to Oregon Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade's announcement that she won't remove former U.S. President Donald Trump from the ballot for the Republican Party primary without a court order, voters on Wednesday filed a lawsuit seeking one.
This case and others like it across the country are based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars anyone who has taken an oath to the U.S. Constitution and then "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" from holding any civil or military office.
"Donald Trump violated his oath of office and incited a violent insurrection that attacked the U.S. Capitol, threatened the assassination of the vice president and congressional leaders, and disrupted the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in our nation's history," Free Speech for People (FSFP) legal director Ron Fein said in a statement.
"Our predecessors understood that oath-breaking insurrectionists will do it again, and worse, if allowed back into power, so they enacted the insurrectionist disqualification clause to protect the republic from people like Trump," he continued. "Trump is legally barred from the ballot and election officials must follow this constitutional mandate."
"All Oregon voters, including the plaintiffs, have a well-established right to have only eligible candidates on the ballot."
FSFP—which represents the Oregon voters and has filed similar legal challenges in Michigan and Minnesota—had sent a letter last month requesting that Griffin-Valade "issue a temporary rule (and subsequent declaratory ruling) that Mr. Trump is constitutionally ineligible to appear on any Oregon future ballot for nomination of election to federal office."
In a statement about denying that request last week, the secretary's office noted that her decision relies on legal advice from the Oregon Department of Justice (DOJ), it only applies to the primary, and she "received significant voter contact" on the topic.
"Oregon law does not give me the authority to determine the qualifications of candidates in a presidential primary," Griffin-Valade said. "I will follow our usual process and expect to put Donald Trump on the primary ballot unless a court directs me otherwise."
"I understand that people want to skip to the end of this story. But right now, we don't even know who the nominee will be," she added. "When the general election comes, we'll follow the law and be completely transparent with our reasoning."
Along with FSFP, the Oregon voters behind the new filing are represented by local attorneys Jason Kafoury and Daniel Meek.
"The United States Constitution makes Donald Trump ineligible to run for or serve in any public office in the country, let alone president," Kafoury argued Wednesday. "All Oregon voters, including the plaintiffs, have a well-established right to have only eligible candidates on the ballot. Since Secretary of State Griffin-Valade has announced that Trump will be on the primary ballot unless a court orders otherwise, we are seeking a court order preventing Trump from being on the ballot."
Griffin-Valade spokesperson Laura Kerns said in an email to the Oregon Capital Chronicle on Wednesday that "the secretary believes that she made the right decision to rely on the advice of DOJ regarding the presidential primary election."
The lawsuit came on the same day as oral arguments before the Colorado Supreme Court in a Trump disqualification case initially brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and firms representing state voters in September.
It also came a day after Trump—the GOP's 2024 front-runner, despite his ongoing criminal cases—said during a televised Fox News town hall that he would be a dictator on "day one," adding that "I want to close the border and I want to drill, drill, drill."
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