California is trying to keep Donald Trump off the 2024 ballot. Could that help his campaign?

California has joined the growing effort to remove former President Donald Trump from the state’s election ballot next year. His supporters say the movement will be another boost to his rage-against-the-machine campaign.

A lawsuit filed this week by Venice Beach civil rights attorney Stephen Yagman, contends that a section of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution disqualifies Trump from holding office because of his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol insurrection.

Court challenges have been filed on behalf of voters in Colorado and MInnesota, states that will also hold primaries on March 5.

Trump currently holds a huge lead among Republicans in statewide polls.

The amendment, ratified three years after the end of the Civil War, bars from office anyone who took an oath to support the Constitution, and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution or provided “aid or comfort to the enemies.”

Such people cannot serve as a senator, representative or presidential elector or hold any office unless a supermajority of Congress agrees. The provision was used after the Civil War to bar some Confederate officials from taking office in the U.S. government, but has rarely been invoked since.

Yagman said the amendment was approved at a time when “people in Congress were very concerned about people who took the oath of office…and initiated a war. They didn’t want that to happen again.”

While the amendment does not specifically mention the president, Yagman argued, “it’s aimed at preventing exactly what happened” when protesters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Trump, he said, “was trying to prevent the transfer of power.”

A number of conservative and liberal legal scholars, ranging from the Federalist Society to Harvard Law School, have agreed that the disqualification section would apply to Trump.

Gerard Magliocca, a law professor at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, cited an 1869 case that found a North Carolina sheriff who held the office in the Confederate government was disqualified from holding the same office after the Civil War. The North Carolina court ruled someone was “engaged in insurrection” if he contributed something “useful or necessary” to the insurrection.

There’s no question that this applies to Trump, argued Ron Fein, legal director of Free Speech for People, which has filed a lawsuit in Minnesota to bar him from the ballot.

“This is a critical part of the Constitution to protect us against people just like Trump,” Fein said.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on behalf of a California voter named A.W. Clark. Yagman would not provide any information about Clark. It was filed against Secretary of State Shirley Weber, who’s in charge of state elections. Her office said it has not been served yet.

Did Trump cause a riot?

Skeptics counter that Trump’s speech at a rally before the insurrection, while fiery and aggressive, did not directly urge supporters to storm the Capitol.

“I think it’s an interesting legal theory but I think it’s a dead end street,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a former member of the state Supreme Court and Attorney General.

“Giving a speech at a rally whether you like it or not is not insurrection,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, a prominent Trump supporter. He added that the legal gambit is will only work to Trump’s benefit.

“I think it makes him stronger politically. People feel like they’re going too far,” he said. “All the people usually saying this are from blue states trying to up their profile, but I think it’s backfiring with independents.”

Yagman dismissed such reasoning, calling Graham a “buffoon.”

Trump’s support among Republicans increased this summer as criminal indictments were handed down in Georgia and Washington, D.C.

But losing a spot on the California ballot would be a setback. The state Republican Party changed delegate selection rules earlier this year so that a candidate winning a majority in the primary would get all 169 Republican convention votes — a major step toward the 1,234 needed for nomination.

Trump stays way ahead

Trump is far ahead of his rivals in the state. A Berkeley-IGS poll last month found him the choice of 55% of the state’s Republicans. Next was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 16%.

In the latest Quinnipiac University Poll, taken Sept. 7 to 11, Trump’s support jumped from 57% last month among Republican and Republican-leaning voters to 62%.

A national CNN/SSRS poll, conducted August 25 to 31, found Trump the choice of 52% of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents, up from 47% in June.

In California, his support in the Berkeley-IGS poll has also grown, from 29% in February to 44% in May to 55% last month.

Trump has been indicted in four cases, including two last month. One involves his efforts to stay in office after his term ended, and the other deals with his attempts to overturn his election loss in Georgia

The more his rivals go after him, the stronger he gets.

“These efforts do play into Trump’s endless arguments that the ‘system’ is out to get him, although those arguments also ignore Trump’s very poor if not necessarily illegal behavior in the aftermath of the 2020 election,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan political analysis firm.

He doubted Trump would wind up being barred from any ballots.

“I do think it is hard to argue that Trump should be barred because of participating in an insurrection when there has not been a court ruling against him to that effect,” Kondik said.