WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court ruled Monday that states cannot exclude Trump from voting over his actions leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, handing former President Donald Trump a landslide victory. The judgment brought an early conclusion to the huge lawsuit. Implications for the 2024 election.
In an uncontested and unsigned judgment, the court The Colorado Supreme Court overturned a ruling that ruled Trump could not serve as president again under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
This article prohibits anyone who previously held a government position but later “engaged in rebellion” from running for various offices.
The court said the Colorado Supreme Court incorrectly assumed that states could decide whether presidential candidates or other candidates for federal office were ineligible.
The ruling made clear that Congress, not the states, must set the rules for how the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment are enforced against candidates for federal office. Therefore, this decision applies to all states, not just Colorado. States retain the power under Article III to prohibit people running for state office from appearing on the ballot.
“We reverse because the Constitution makes Congress, not the states, responsible for enforcing Article III for all federal employees and candidates,” the ruling said.
By basing its decision on this legal question, the court avoided analyzing or determining whether President Trump's actions amounted to insurrection.
The decision comes just a day before Colorado's primary election.
Minutes after the verdict, President Trump praised the verdict, posting in all caps on his social media sites: “Big win for America!!!”
Follow live updates on Trump Supreme Court decisions
The decision not only ensures that Mr. Trump remains on Colorado's ballots, but also puts an end to similar incidents that have occurred in the past. So far, only two states have followed Colorado's path: Maine and Illinois. Both of these decisions were put on hold, as was the Colorado ruling.
Colorado Secretary of State Jenna Griswold acknowledged in a statement that the court had ruled that “states do not have the authority to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment against candidates for Congress.” Ta. Following this decision, Donald Trump will be a candidate in Colorado's 2024 presidential primary. ”
Griswold later expressed his “disappointment” with the decision in an interview with NBC's Katie Toole on MSNBC. “I believe the state should be able constitutionally to ban insurrectionists who break their oath,” Griswold told Katie. Congress is a largely dysfunctional institution, so it will ultimately be up to American voters to save democracy in November. ”
Maine Secretary of State Shena Bellows quickly followed up on Mr. Griswold's lawsuit, saying in a statement after the verdict: The first petition is invalid. ”
The Supreme Court's ruling comes after many challenges to the 2020 election results, including Trump's exhortation for supporters of President Trump to march on the Capitol on January 6, as Congress was about to formally certify Joe Biden's victory. It has taken away one of the means by which President Trump can be held accountable for his role in advocating this.
Trump also faces criminal charges for similar conduct. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in April on his broader claims of executive privilege.
The ruling said that if state officials had the freedom to decide who appears on the presidential ballot, a patchwork of decisions could be made across the country, potentially throwing elections into chaos. I warned you.
“As a result, it is entirely possible that a single candidate may be declared ineligible in some states but not in others based on the same conduct,” the decision states. Ta.
The final vote was unanimous, but the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, was divided on how to resolve the case. In a joint concurring opinion, three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote that the court should clarify how Congress enforces Article III. He complained that the government made more decisions than was necessary.
They said the decision could “insulate” President Trump from “future controversies” and that the ruling “closes the door to other potential means of federal enforcement” under Article III. ” he added.
Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett disagreed with the liberal justices' opinion, but agreed that the court went further than necessary.
Barrett said that although he disagreed with some of the rationale, liberals should not “amplify their differences” on such political issues.
“All nine justices agree on the outcome of this case. That's the message Americans should take home,” she added.
The Colorado court based its Dec. 19 ruling on Article III, which was enacted after the Civil War to prevent former Confederates from returning to power in the U.S. government.
The case raised several new legal questions, including whether the language applies to presidential candidates and who decides whether someone was involved in the insurrection.
The state high court's ruling states that President Trump committed insurrection by inciting the January 6 riot, but the president is not a “public official” and is therefore subject to the 14th Amendment's insurrection clause. The court overturned a lower court's ruling that it was not. US. ”
Mr. Trump and his allies have raised this point, as well as other arguments that the 14th Amendment is inapplicable. They also claimed that January 6 was not a riot.
Republican lawmakers, including some of President Trump's main opponents, broadly supported his argument that any attempt to remove him from the ballot is a form of partisan election interference. Some Democrats, including California Governor Gavin Newsom, have also expressed concern about the provisions of the 14th Amendment being used as a partisan weapon.
The first lawsuit was filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a left-wing Washington government watchdog group, and two law firms on behalf of six Colorado voters.
They allege in court documents that Trump “intentionally organized and incited a violent mob to storm the Capitol in a desperate attempt to prevent the counting of electoral votes cast against him.” attacked,'' he claimed.
Colorado is one of more than a dozen states that will hold primary elections on Tuesday.