A federal judge ruled that the plaintiff’s lawsuit lacked standing.
A federal judge in West Virginia rejected a bid Thursday to remove former President Donald Trump from the state’s ballot, rebuffing a bid from a little-known presidential candidate to remove the former president.
District Judge Irene Berger ruled that John Anthony Castro, the candidate who filed a lawsuit against President Trump, lacked the standing to sue. She sided with attorneys for President Trump, Secretary of State Mac Warner, and the West Virginia GOP to dismiss Mr. Castro’s suit.
U.S. District Judge Irene Berger wrote that the evidence that Mr. Castro had submitted removes “any doubt that Mr. Castro’s purported ‘campaign’ exists as a vehicle for pursuing litigation, not votes,” adding that he could not prove any political activity in the state aside from the lawsuit that he filed.
Mr. Castro, who is based in Texas, has filed at least two dozen lawsuits against the former president to remove him from respective states’ ballots in recent weeks. Earlier this month, a judge in Arizona dismissed a similar lawsuit.
His lawsuit had argued that President Trump should be disbarred from appearing on the state’s ballot because Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution stipulates that anyone who engaged in an insurrection against the United States cannot be a presidential candidate. The U.S. Supreme Court declined in October to hear the appeal of a similar case that Mr. Castro brought in Florida.
A court in Colorado recently ruled that the former president—under the judges’ reading of the provision—cannot appear on the state’s ballots, although the case is likely going to be appealed to the Supreme Court. The Colorado case, however, was not brought by Mr. Castro but by a left-wing activist group, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and headed by a board member who currently serves on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s advisory council.
But as Mr. Castro had “alleged that he is a candidate for the Republican nomination for President and anticipates being on the ballot in West Virginia,” his lawsuit “contains few specific factual allegations related to his candidacy,” Judge Berger wrote.
