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The Supreme Court on Monday ruled against former President Donald Trump in Colorado, after months of debate over whether the front-runner for the Republican nomination violated the “insurrectionist clause” of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The court ruled that it should be on the ballot.
The opinion was a major victory for President Trump, defeating one of the many legal threats that plagued and galvanized his campaign against President Joe Biden. However, the decision does not affect four ongoing criminal cases facing Trump, including a federal election destruction case that covers some of the same conduct around January 6, 2021. Not affected.
The courts unanimously agreed that Trump could not be unilaterally removed from the ballot.
However, the justices were divided on how far-reaching the ruling was. The 5-4 majority said no state could exclude federal candidates from the ballot, but four justices said the court should have limited its opinion.
The five-judge majority, Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Samuel Alito, Justice Neil Gorsuch, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, ruled that unless Congress first passes the bill, states will not be able to hold any federal employees. In particular, it stated that the president could not be excluded from the ballot.
“We conclude that a state may disqualify a person holding or seeking to hold state office. However, each state has a constitutional right to Article 3 with respect to federal office, particularly the presidential office. “There is no authority to compel this,” the opinion states.
“Nothing in the Constitution delegates to the states the power to enforce Article III against federal employees and candidates,” the majority added.
“A huge victory for America!!!” Trump wrote on social media.
Four of the justices differed on the scope of the sentence.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a concurring opinion that the majority’s opinion “closes the door to other potential avenues of federal enforcement.” “We cannot take part in opinions that unnecessarily decide important and difficult issues.”
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote a solo concurring opinion, saying the case “need not address the complex question of whether federal law is the only means to enforce Title III.”
CNN Supreme Court analyst and University of Texas Law School professor Steve Vladeck said the five conservatives went further than the other four had hoped.
“First, the unsigned majority opinion holds that states cannot enforce Article III not only against presidential candidates, but also against candidates for federal office. Second, Congress It also requires the United States to pass an affirmative bill to enforce Article III, which would deny the federal government the ability to count electoral votes in favor of candidates who violate Article III. Justice Sotomayor, Justice Kagan, Messrs. Barrett and Jackson said that they had other answers to these questions. No. They would not have answered at all.”
The Supreme Court’s opinion does not directly address whether President Trump’s actions on January 6 constituted an “insurrection,” sidestepping an issue that Colorado courts have grappled with.
The unsigned opinion noted that a lower court in Colorado had found that President Trump’s comments before the storming of the U.S. Capitol amounted to insurrection within the meaning of the Constitution. But the U.S. Supreme Court’s unsigned opinion never reverted to that decision.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal group that filed the lawsuit on behalf of Republican voters, criticized the Supreme Court’s decision but called it “no victory for Trump” because it refused to address the insurrection language. He also said. Originally from Colorado.
“The Supreme Court had the opportunity to acquit Mr. Trump in this case, but chose not to. Every court, the decision-making body, that has substantively looked into this matter has said that on January 6th, “We determined that it was a riot and that Donald Trump incited it. That remains the case,” the group said.
Colorado Secretary of State Jenna Griswold told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on CNN’s “The Situation Room” on Monday that she was “pleased” that the Supreme Court made the decision ahead of Super Tuesday, but that she was not satisfied with the decision. said he was disappointed.
“We believe it’s up to Colorado or other states to remove insurrectionists who break their oath from the ballot. In the end, the U.S. Supreme Court disagreed,” Griswold said. , added that it supports the court’s decision.
The ruling was the first time the high court reviewed President Trump’s actions on January 6, and came a day before Super Tuesday, when 16 states and territories, including Colorado, will hold nomination contests.
Utilizing the 14th Amendment to derail Trump’s candidacy has always been considered legally difficult, but the Colorado Supreme Court in December will consider using the 14th Amendment to derail Trump’s candidacy. The victory gave us great momentum. Since that decision, Trump has also been removed from the vote in Maine and Illinois.
Courts and legal groups have been debating for months the meaning of the post-Civil War clause at the center of the case, which prohibits certain officials who took an oath to uphold the Constitution and then participated in the rebellion from ever holding public office again. . The key provision, known as Article III, was originally intended to prevent former Confederates from regaining power.
However, there was considerable uncertainty about the meaning of the ban and how it should be applied. In arguments on February 8, several conservative and liberal justices raised fundamental questions about fairness in Colorado, which effectively answered questions for the rest of the nation.
President Trump has mocked the 14th Amendment lawsuits happening across the country, calling it an unconstitutional insult pursued by Democrats who are trying to get Trump off the ballot rather than challenge him in the November election. always complains. His lawyers argued that it would be “un-American” to deprive voters of the chance to decide whether Trump should return to the White House.
Similar 14th Amendment challenges against Trump have all been rejected on procedural grounds in Minnesota, Michigan, Massachusetts and Oregon. But in Colorado, President Trump finally appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in January after a series of rulings by state courts.
In September, the liberal-leaning watchdog group Washington Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics represented six Republicans and independent voters, led by Republican pioneer Norma Anderson, 91, a former state representative. filed a lawsuit in Colorado. They sued Colorado Secretary of State Jenna Griswold and asked a judge to force her to remove Trump’s name from the state’s Republican primary ballot.
A district judge in Colorado presided over a week-long trial in November and concluded that even though Trump had “incited insurrection,” the ban did not apply to the president and should remain on the ballot. did. In a sharply divided 4-3 vote, the Colorado Supreme Court affirmed findings regarding President Trump’s role in the storming of the U.S. Capitol, but ruled that the ban actually applies to the president as well. Stated.
Only three states removed Trump from their ballots due to the “insurrection ban.”
In addition to Colorado, top election officials in Maine reached a similar conclusion, ruling that Trump is constitutionally disqualified from the presidency. Trump has appealed, and state courts have suspended those proceedings while the Supreme Court deals with the Colorado case.
An Illinois judge also removed Trump from the state’s ballot on January 6 for the same reason, but enforcement of that ruling was suspended pending an appeal.
In the Supreme Court arguments, there was an expectation that Mr. Trump would win. Conservatives on the court, like Roberts and Kavanaugh, who are likely to be the most skeptical of the former president, posed relatively friendly questions to Trump’s lawyer, Jonathan Mitchell. When the voters’ lawyers took the stand, the questioning became even more pointed and persistent.
And it wasn’t just conservatives who seemed to be on the attack. Judge Kagan, who was nominated by President Barack Obama, and Judge Jackson, Biden’s nominee, also focused on some of the arguments that President Trump raised in his brief.
“The question we have to face is why should a single state decide who becomes president of the United States?” Kagan pressed her challenger, Jason Murray. . “Why should a single nation have the ability to make this decision not just for its own citizens but for the nation as a whole?”
This story has been updated with additional developments.
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