The Supreme Court rules to keep Trump on the Colorado ballot

(CNN) — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that former President Donald Trump must be at the polls in Colorado, a decision that follows months of debate over whether the Republican presidential front-runner violated the 14th Amendment’s sedition clause.

The ruling represents a huge victory for Trump, who defeated one of the many legal threats that plagued and animated his campaign against President Joe Biden. However, the decision has no effect on the four ongoing criminal cases against Trump, including a federal election subversion case that covers similar conduct around January 6, 2021.

The court was unanimous that Trump could not be removed from the ballot unilaterally.

But the justices were divided on the scope of the decision. The 5-4 majority said no state could remove a federal candidate from any ballot, but four justices said the court should limit its discretion.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Cavanagh – the five-judge majority – wrote that states cannot remove any federal official, especially the president, from the ballot without first allowing Congress to pass legislation.

“We conclude that states may disqualify persons who hold or seek to hold state office. But states are not empowered by the Constitution to apply Article 3 in relation to federal offices, particularly the presidency,” the opinion said. .

“Nothing in the Constitution delegates to the states the power to apply Article 3 to federal officeholders and candidates,” the majority added.

The decision, the first time the high court weighed Trump’s action on Jan. 6, came a day before Super Tuesday, when 16 states and territories, including Colorado, will choose their nominees.

Using the 14th Amendment to block Trump’s candidacy has always been seen as a legal long shot, but it gained significant momentum with a Colorado Supreme Court victory in December. Since that decision, Trump has also been removed from the ballot in Maine and Illinois.

The meaning of the post-Civil War provision at the center of the case, a text that barred certain officials who swore to uphold the constitution and then treason from ever holding office, has been debated in courts and legal groups for months. Post. The main provision, known as Section 3, was originally intended to prevent former confederates from reclaiming power.

But there was great uncertainty about the meaning of the ban and how it should be enforced. Several conservative and liberal justices raised key questions during the Feb. 8 arguments about whether Colorado was justified in answering those questions for the rest of the country.

Trump has derided the 14th Amendment lawsuits that have sprung up across the country and regularly complains that they are unconstitutional affronts by Democrats who want to get him off the ballot rather than compete with him in November. His lawyers have argued that it would be “un-American” to deprive voters of the opportunity to decide whether Trump should return to the White House.

Similar 14th Amendment challenges against Trump were rejected on procedural grounds in Minnesota, Michigan, Massachusetts and Oregon. But in Colorado, a series of state court decisions led to a case that Trump appealed to the US Supreme Court in January.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a liberal-leaning watchdog group in Washington, filed the suit in September on behalf of six Republican voters and independents in Colorado, led by Norma Anderson, 91, a former Republican state legislator. They sued Colorado Secretary of State Jenna Griswold and asked a judge to force Trump’s name to be removed from the state’s Republican Party primary ballot.

A Colorado state district judge presided over a week-long hearing before concluding in November that Trump “though engaged in sedition,” should remain on the ballot because the ban does not apply to presidents. The Colorado Supreme Court, in a closely divided vote (4-3), upheld the findings about Trump’s role in the attack on the US Capitol, but said the ban does, in fact, apply to presidents.

Only three states eliminated Trump from the election because of the “sedition ban.”

In addition to Colorado, Maine’s top election official reached the same conclusion and ruled that Trump is constitutionally disqualified from office. Trump is appealing, and the state court stayed that action while the Supreme Court took up the Colorado case.

An Illinois judge also removed Trump from the ballot in that state on Jan. 6 for the same reason, though the application of that ruling was stayed pending possible appeals.

Debates in the Supreme Court

During the Supreme Court arguments, it looked like Trump would win. Conservatives on the court were more inclined to be skeptical of former presidents like Roberts and Cavanaugh, firing relatively friendly questions at Trump’s lawyer, Jonathan Mitchell. When the lawyer representing the voters got up, the questions became more pointed and insistent.

And it wasn’t just conservatives who were under attack: Justices Elena Kagan, nominated by President Barack Obama, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Biden pick, also focused on some of the arguments Trump raised in his writings.

“The question must be faced as to why a state should decide who will be president of the United States,” Kagan urged Jason Murray, representing the plaintiffs. “Why should a single state have the ability to make this decision not just for its own citizens, but for the rest of the nation?”