The Supreme Court ruled that states cannot remove former President Donald Trump from the ballot due to his actions leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The unanimous ruling reversed a decision by the Colorado Supreme Court that Trump could not serve again as president under section 3 of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
The 14th Amendment, enacted after the Civil War, includes a provision that prohibits individuals who have previously held government positions and later engaged in insurrection from running for various offices. The Colorado Supreme Court had interpreted this provision to apply to Trump, but the Supreme Court disagreed.
The Supreme Court’s ruling clarified that it is Congress, not the states, that has the authority to enforce the 14th Amendment provision against federal office-seekers. This means that the decision applies to all states, not just Colorado. States, however, retain the power to bar people running for state office from appearing on the ballot under section 3.
The court’s decision was based on the legal question of who has the authority to enforce section 3 of the 14th Amendment. By focusing on this question, the court avoided any analysis or determination of whether Trump’s actions constituted an insurrection.
The decision was announced just a day before the Colorado primary. Trump hailed the decision in an all-capital-letters post on his social media site, writing, “BIG WIN FOR AMERICA!!!”
The ruling not only ensures that Trump remains on the ballot in Colorado, but it also puts an end to similar cases that have arisen. So far, only two other states, Maine and Illinois, have followed Colorado’s path. Interestingly, in Illinois, a judge had previously removed Donald Trump from the state ballot. Like the Colorado ruling, both those decisions were put on hold.
In a statement, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold acknowledged the court ruling “that states do not have the authority to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment for federal candidates. In accordance with this decision, Donald Trump is an eligible candidate on Colorado’s 2024 Presidential Primary.”
The Supreme Court decision removes one avenue to holding Trump accountable for his role in challenging the 2020 election results, including his exhortation that his supporters should march on the Capitol on Jan. 6, when Congress was about to formalize President Joe Biden’s win.
Trump is facing criminal charges for the same conduct. The Supreme Court in April will hear oral arguments on Trump’s broad claim of presidential immunity.
The ruling warned of the dangers of a patchwork of decisions around the country that could send elections into chaos if state officials had the freedom to determine who could appear on the ballot for president.
The court noted, “The result could well be that a single candidate would be declared ineligible in some states, but not others, based on the same conduct.”
Although the bottom-line vote was unanimous, there were some divisions on the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, as to how the case was resolved. The three liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — complained in a jointly written concurring opinion that the court had decided more than it needed to be laying out how section 3 could be enforced by Congress.
Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated, “All nine justices agree on the outcome of this case. That is the message Americans should take home.”
The initial lawsuit was filed on behalf of six Colorado voters by the left-leaning government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and two law firms. They alleged in court papers that Trump “intentionally organized and incited a violent mob to attack the United States Capitol in a desperate attempt to prevent the counting of electoral votes cast against him.”
Colorado is one of more than a dozen states that has its primary election on Tuesday. This ruling, therefore, has immediate implications for the primary and potentially far-reaching effects on the 2024 presidential election.