How could any ballot disqualification be challenged?
Article II of the United States Constitution establishes three criteria for presidential eligibility: One must be a “natural born citizen,” at least 35 years old and a resident of the United States for at least 14 years.
Since the Constitution prevails when it and a federal statute conflict, the argument would be that Congress lacks the authority to alter that list of criteria — such as by adding a requirement that one has not been convicted of unlawfully taking government documents.
Notably, the Constitution does authorize Congress to render people ineligible to hold federal office as a penalty for convictions in impeachment proceedings. But nothing in the text of the Constitution says lawmakers may use ordinary criminal law to do so.
What have courts said?
In a 1969 case, the Supreme Court rejected an attempt by the House of Representatives, by majority vote, to block Adam Clayton Powell Jr. from taking his seat; voters in his district had re-elected him despite allegations of misconduct. The court ruled that, because he met the Constitution’s eligibility criteria to be a House member, “the House was without power to exclude him from its membership.”
Citing Alexander Hamilton, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in that majority opinion that “a fundamental principle of our representative democracy is that “the people should choose whom they please to govern them.”
And in a 1995 case, the Supreme Court struck down an amendment to the Arkansas constitution that had attempted to impose term limits on federal House members and senators elected from that state. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the state had no power to add qualifications to the list of eligibility criteria established by the federal Constitution.
Citing those and other precedents in an aside in a 2000 case before the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, Judge Richard Posner, who has been deemed the most cited American legal scholar of all time, asserted that Congress lacked authority to supplement the eligibility requirements for the presidency listed in the Constitution.
