Sherrilyn Ifill on a Trump win: ‘We will cease to be a democracy’

The timing is right for a 14th amendment renaissance, says Sherrilyn Ifill.

The 14th amendment, created during the Reconstruction era, carries the promise of equality for Black people and accountability for people engaged in insurrection and white supremacy, though its provisions have never been enforced fully.

Pro-democracy advocacy groups are using the amendment’s third section to keep Donald Trump off the presidential ballot for engaging in insurrection, a high-profile and novel approach for a presidential candidate. So far, a court in Colorado and a Maine elections official have used these arguments to say Trump can’t appear on the ballot in those states. The cases, which Trump has appealed, are expected to go to the US supreme court.

Ifill, a longtime civil rights lawyer, wants a generation of attorneys to be trained on the amendment and for it to enter into Americans’ understanding of their rights. In Washington DC in 2024, she will launch a center focused on the 14th amendment at the Howard University law school, a historically Black university.

As a former president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Ifill has sued Trump before, alleging that his presidential campaign disfranchised Black voters in 2020. Since she left the NAACP in 2022, she has repeatedly sounded the alarm about US democracy in peril, saying the country is in a “moment of existential crisis”.

If Trump returns to the White House in 2024, “we will cease to be a democracy”, she said.

The Guardian spoke to Ifill about the stakes of this year’s election, and how to protect civil rights at a critical time. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Are we in a crisis point for democracy, unlike we’ve seen in our lifetimes?

Absolutely. No question