Attorneys ask the U.S. Supreme Court to reject petition from ousted Otero County commissioner

The U.S. Supreme Court lacks jurisdiction to review a New Mexico ruling that ousted Couy Griffin from his seat on the Otero County Commission, a group of attorneys argued this week.

Griffin has asked the nation’s highest court to review a decision by a New Mexico judge who booted Griffin from office in 2022 for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Griffin’s attorneys argued in a petition filed last year that the New Mexico district judge erred in finding that Griffin’s actions violated the insurrection clause in the 14th Amendment.

A brief filed Tuesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to deny Griffin’s petition, arguing that he was ousted under a New Mexico law that allows the removal of public officials who commit acts that disqualify them from office.

The state law was the mechanism used by a group of New Mexico residents to remove Griffin from office, said Nikhel Sus, an attorney for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, D.C., who co-authored the brief.

“In New Mexico, residents can go to court and sue the office holder to adjudicate whether they are disqualified,” Sus said in a phone interview Thursday. “If they are disqualified, the court can order that the office holder be removed from office, and that’s what happened in Mr. Griffin’s case.”

In Griffin’s case, the state law was used in tandem with the insurrection clause in the 14th Amendment, Sus said. Because Griffin was removed from office under a New Mexico law, the U.S. Supreme Court lacks jurisdiction to overturn the decision, the attorneys argue in their brief.

A fervent supporter of former President Donald Trump, Griffin was convicted in federal court of a misdemeanor for entering the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021, without going inside the building. He was sentenced to 14 days and given credit for time served.

Three New Mexico residents filed a civil lawsuit against Griffin, arguing that he violated the 14th Amendment when he entered the Capitol grounds that day.

Griffin represented himself in a civil bench trial before 1st Judicial District Judge Francis Mathew, who found that Griffin had engaged in an insurrection and ordered his removal as an Otero County commissioner.

The September 2022 ruling marked the first time since 1869 that someone was removed from public office for violating Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

Griffin said he has no hope of regaining his post on the Otero County Commission.

“It’s a disgrace that a bench trial before a liberal Democrat judge can remove a duly elected official,” Griffin said Thursday in a phone interview. “It’s just fraud and corruption in its purest form.”

Griffin said he believes the U.S. Supreme Court will dismiss his opponent’s arguments and consider his petition.

“The plaintiffs are just trying to hang us up in the legal cesspool that they live in,” he said. “We need the courts to respond.”

Section 3 prohibits people who swore an oath to the U.S. Constitution, and later participated in an insurrection, from holding public office. The Civil War-era amendment was intended, in part, to prevent former Confederates from holding office.

The New Mexico Supreme Court later rejected an appeal from Griffin on procedural grounds, finding that he had failed to meet deadlines for filing required briefs.

Griffin’s attorneys argue that the New Mexico judge violated Griffin’s free speech rights and erred by finding that he participated in an insurrection.

In response, Sus and others argue that the New Mexico judge ruled correctly that Griffin participated in an insurrection intended to “maintain a preferred president in office past the expiration of his specified four-year term.”