The Maine Supreme Judicial Court’s ruling on Trump’s ballot eligibility never reached the constitutional question. In a per curiam opinion issued January 24, 2024, the seven-justice panel dismissed the appeal as interlocutory, holding that the lower court’s remand order was not a final judgment the court could review.1State of Maine Judicial Branch. Trump v. Secretary of State Decision, 2024 ME 5 Donald Trump stayed on Maine’s Republican primary ballot. Six weeks later, the U.S. Supreme Court resolved the underlying question for every state at once.
How the Case Reached Maine’s Highest Court
The dispute started with Secretary of State Shenna Bellows. On December 28, 2023, after Maine voters filed formal challenges under state petition-review procedures, Bellows ruled that Trump’s conduct surrounding January 6 met the definition of insurrection under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment and declared his candidate petition invalid.2Congress.gov. Fourteenth Amendment Section 3 – Disqualification From Holding Office Maine became the second state to find Trump ineligible, after a Colorado Supreme Court decision earlier that month. No other secretary of state in the country had unilaterally made the same call.
Trump’s team appealed to Kennebec County Superior Court. By then the U.S. Supreme Court had agreed to hear the Colorado case, Trump v. Anderson, which raised the identical constitutional questions. Superior Court Justice Michaela Murphy declined to rule first. She sent the case back to Bellows with instructions to issue a new ruling only after the U.S. Supreme Court decided Colorado’s case, writing that with “so many federal issues in the case before the high court,” it would be “imprudent for the Superior Court to be the first court in Maine to address them.”
Bellows and the voters who had filed the challenges did not want to wait. They appealed Murphy’s remand order to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, asking the justices either to decide the merits themselves or to force the Superior Court to do so.1State of Maine Judicial Branch. Trump v. Secretary of State Decision, 2024 ME 5
Why the Court Refused to Decide
The justices never addressed whether Trump engaged in insurrection. Their entire opinion dealt with one procedural question: was the appeal properly before them? The answer was no.
Maine courts generally do not hear appeals from orders that aren’t final judgments, and Justice Murphy’s remand was not a final judgment. She had sent the case back to the Secretary of State for further proceedings, leaving the matter undecided. That made the order interlocutory and ordinarily unreviewable.
Bellows argued two exceptions should apply. Under the judicial economy exception, she said immediate review would save time. Under the “death knell” exception, she argued the order would effectively kill the challenge if not reviewed right away. The court rejected both. On judicial economy, the justices pointed out that the pending U.S. Supreme Court decision was likely to reshape the law and could make any Maine ruling irrelevant. On the death knell argument, the court found the underlying case was not being terminated. Issuing a ruling at that stage, the court wrote, would amount to an advisory opinion, and other decision-makers’ choices were “likely to alter the landscape of the case and narrow the scope of our review.”1State of Maine Judicial Branch. Trump v. Secretary of State Decision, 2024 ME 5
What the Dismissal Meant for the Ballot
Justice Murphy’s stay stayed in place. That meant Bellows’ December 28 disqualification was paused, and Trump’s name remained on the Republican primary ballot while everyone waited for Washington. The dismissal gave neither side a win on the merits. It simply preserved the status quo until a court with nationwide authority weighed in.
How the U.S. Supreme Court Closed the Question
On March 4, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Trump v. Anderson and reversed Colorado’s removal of Trump from the ballot. All nine justices agreed on the result: states cannot enforce Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to disqualify candidates for federal office.3Supreme Court of the United States. Trump v. Anderson Enforcement authority against federal candidates belongs to Congress, not individual states.4Congress.gov. Disqualification of a Candidate for the Presidency, Part II: Examining Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment as It Applies to Ballot Access The justices did not decide whether January 6 was an insurrection or whether Trump’s conduct qualified. They framed the case as a question of who gets to enforce the clause, warning that state-by-state decisions would produce a patchwork of contradictory outcomes.
The ruling applied nationwide and immediately mooted Bellows’ original determination. Within three hours of the decision, Bellows formally withdrew her December 2023 ruling, writing that she was acting “[c]onsistent with my oath and obligation to follow the law and the Constitution, and pursuant to the Anderson decision.” Trump appeared on Maine’s Republican primary ballot the next day, March 5, when Maine voted on Super Tuesday.
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court’s refusal to rule turned out to be the entire story. Any opinion it had issued on the Fourteenth Amendment would have been overridden within weeks. By dismissing the appeal, the court avoided the advisory ruling it had warned against, and Maine’s primary ran under the single rule the U.S. Supreme Court set for every state.