A Georgia judge greenlighted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) re-election campaign on Friday after a legal advocacy group made a Constitutional challenge to her candidacy.
The final decision on whether Greene’s name is on the ballot in November or not rests with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, according to the Associated Press. Greene testified in a Georgia courtroom last month after Free Speech for People (FSFP), a legal advocacy group, claimed that the Georgia representative should be barred from holding public office for allegedly aiding “insurrectionists” in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021.
FSFP has brought legal challenges against several other Republican lawmakers as well, though Greene’s is the only one to make to a court hearing, so far. Democrats in Washington have watched Greene’s case develop as they lead a Congressional investigation into January 6. The House committee probing last year’s riot plans to release a preliminary report on its findings this summer, ahead of midterm elections.
FSFP partnered with Our Revolution, an organization founded by Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT), to challenge several GOP lawmakers’ authority to run for office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, a law originally adopted to keep Confederate officials and their supporters from holding public office following the Civil War. The section says:
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, 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. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
FSFP attorney Ron Fein argued last month that Greene used “coded language,” largely on social media platforms, to communicate with and instruct the “insurrectionists” that rioted in the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
“The way that insurrections are organized nowadays is less in uniforms with military hierarchies and chains of command, less with detailed military plans of battle, and more through social media and the mass media,” he argued.
Greene’s attorney, James Bopp Jr., argued that the legal challenge was an anti-democratic attempt to remove Greene from office.
“The right to vote is at stake right here right now,” Bopp said at the time. “They want to deny the right to vote to the thousands of people by having Greene removed from the ballot.”