Obama Judge Gives Donald Trump an Election Win

Former President Donald Trump has received another favorable ruling in a ballot challenge lawsuit, this time from a judge appointed by his Democrat predecessor, Barack Obama.

Trump is currently the favorite to secure the 2024 GOP presidential nomination by a wide margin as he mounts an attempt to retake the White House. Working to potentially impede those efforts are numerous lawsuits across the country attempting to have him barred from appearing on the ballot in certain states. These challenges have been premised on Trump's involvement in fomenting the January 6 Capitol riots and a clause in the 14th Amendment barring anyone from holding elected office if they participated in or supported an insurrection against the U.S. government.

While the movement has received the endorsement from several state officials as a worthwhile consideration, the lawsuits have, to this point, not been successful in removing Trump from the ballot in any state. On Tuesday, conservative lawyer and Republican Party official Harmeet Dhillon announced that a lawsuit attempting to remove the former president from the ballot in Arizona had been dismissed by a federal judge.

"Happy to announce that yet another federal district court, this time in Arizona, has dismissed a challenge to [Donald Trump] being on the ballot for 2024," Dhillon wrote in a post to X, the platform previously known as Twitter. "The court made short work of the standing arguments in the case. Congrats to our client & my [Dhillon Law] colleagues, again!"

While Trump has faced many political setbacks from judges appointed by Democratic presidents, Tuesday's ruling was a rare example of a judicial win for the former president from a Democrat-appointed official. Judge Douglas L. Rayes was nominated for a federal bench position in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona in September 2013 and was later confirmed by the Senate that following May.

As noted in a ruling shared by Dhillon, the Arizona lawsuit was among those filed in 27 states by John Anthony Castro, a Texas lawyer currently mounting an obscure, longshot campaign for the GOP presidential nomination. His suits have argued that Trump's position on the ballot in alleged defiance of the 14th Amendment has unfairly impacted the chances of his own campaign. His argument has not yet found success, and his suits have also been dismissed in Florida, Idaho, Maine, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Washington, D.C.

The ruling in Arizona stated that Castro "is not genuinely competing with Trump for votes or contributions, and therefore is not suffering a concrete competitive injury.

Newsweek reached out to representatives for Castro via email.