DENVER (AP) The effort to ban former President Donald Trump from the ballot under the Constitutions insurrection clause turned to distant history on Wednesday, when a law professor testified about how the post-Civil War provision was indeed intended to apply to presidential candidates.

Gerard Magliocca, of Indiana University, said there was scant scholarship on Section Three of the 14th Amendment when he began researching it in late 2020. He testified that he uncovered evidence in 150-year-old court rulings, congressional testimony and presidential executive orders that it applied to presidents and to those who simply encouraged an insurrection rather than physically participated in one.

Magliocca didnt mention Trump by name, but the plaintiffs in the case have argued that Colorado must ban him from the ballot because his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol , which was intended to halt Congress certification of Joe Bidens win and keep Trump in power, falls under the provision. The section originally was designed to prevent former Confederates from returning to their old federal and state jobs and taking over the government.

It was not intended as punishment, Magliocca said of the ban. A number of senators discussed the fact that this was simply adding another qualification to office.

Trumps attorneys on Wednesday moved for an immediate ruling dismissing the case because they said the plaintiffs had not proved that Trump incited the Jan. 6 riot, saying all his actions were legal speech. District Court Judge Sarah B. Wallace denied the motion, noting that many of the legal questions raised during the hearing have never been addressed by a court before and that shell rule on them later.