A federal judge on Tuesday directed a self-represented plaintiff from Englewood to explain why she should be allowed to seek President Donald Trump’s removal from office on the grounds that he engaged in insurrection.

Marcia M. Radin filed a one-page document on Feb. 5, labeled a “grievance,” in which she alleged Trump and Vice President JD Vance are constitutionally ineligible to hold office.

“Since January 6, 2021, DONALD J. TRUMP and JD VANCE have given aid and comfort to the insurrectionists. Most recently, he has pardoned those who pled guilty or were found guilty of insurrection,” she wrote, concluding the defendants were “illegitimate holders of their offices.”

U.S. Magistrate Judge Richard T. Gurley responded to Radin’s filing by directing her to resubmit her complaint on the court-approved form. More substantially, Gurley ordered her to demonstrate how she had standing to sue in the first place.

“Ms. Radin’s challenge to the eligibility of President Trump and Vice President Vance under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment alleges a generalized grievance as a member of the public and does not demonstrate she has suffered or will suffer a concrete and particularized injury,” he wrote on Feb. 11.

Gurley gave Radin 30 days to explain why she has standing to seek Trump and Vance’s removal from office.

Radin’s challenge to Trump’s constitutional eligibility echoed a recent high-profile legal case from Colorado that rocketed from state court to the nation’s highest court in a matter of months.

In 2023, four Republican and two unaffiliated voters argued Trump could not hold the presidency a second time under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, ratified in the wake of the Civil War. Section 3 disqualifies senators, U.S. representatives and “an officer of the United States,” among others, from holding future office if they took an oath to support the Constitution and subsequently “engaged in insurrection.”

The petitioners argued then-candidate Trump was constitutionally disqualified because of his involvement in his supporters’ violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. A Denver judge agreed Trump engaged in insurrection, but did not believe Section 3 ultimately applied to a presidential candidate.

Trump appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court, which concluded by 4-3 that Section 3 did cover Trump and that his conduct rendered him ineligible to appear on Colorado’s ballot. In February 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that decision, believing Section 3 does not empower states to disqualify insurrectionist federal candidates.

Shortly after his inauguration last month, Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of more than 1,500 people who attacked police officers or otherwise disrupted the counting of the electoral votes on Jan. 6. Trump is also moving to fire the federal law enforcement agents involved in prosecuting the defendants.

Radin told Colorado Politics she is a registered Democrat who has been frustrated and disappointed at Trump’s actions since the 2024 election. She was unfamiliar with the prior Colorado lawsuit, but she got the idea for her complaint from watching a TikTok video in which an out-of-state attorney told viewers they have the “right to file this grievance.”

“I don’t expect anything to come of it,” Radin said. “It was just something for me to feel like I was accomplishing something to resist the incumbent president.”

Although Section 3 of the 14th Amendment was successfully used against an insurrectionist official in New Mexico, it is not clear whether Radin can invoke the constitutional provision through her civil lawsuit. In his order, Gurley cited other disqualification cases that differed in key ways from Radin’s — including challenges to citizenship, lawsuits against insurrectionist candidates rather than officeholders, and challenges to state officeholders.

Radin said she intends to file a response to Gurley’s order.

The case is Radin v. Trump et al.