The US Supreme Court will decide whether Trump can be disqualified from the Colorado ballot

The Supreme Court will decide whether Donald Trump can be on the Colorado ballot after being disqualified by the state.

The Supreme Court announced this Friday that it will hear an appeal by a former Colorado president who ruled that he cannot run in the primaries because of his role during the attack on the Capitol, fully inserting the court into the 2024 presidential campaign.

The justices recognized the need to reach a decision quickly, as voters will soon begin casting their ballots in presidential primaries across the country.

There will be a discussion in early February.

The court will consider for the first time the meaning and scope of the 14th Amendment’s provision, which prohibits certain people from holding public office who “take part in rebellion.” After the Civil War, an amendment was adopted in 1868. It has been used so rarely that the country’s highest court has never had an opportunity to interpret it before.

The Colorado Supreme Court, by a 4-3 vote, ruled last month that Trump should not be on the Republican primary ballot. This decision was the first time the 14th Amendment was used to exclude a presidential candidate from the ballot.

Trump is separately appealing a ruling by Democratic Secretary of State Shanna Bellows of Maine in state court that he was ineligible to appear on the ballot for his role in the attack on the Capitol.

The Colorado Supreme Court and Maine Secretary of State’s rulings are on hold pending appeals.

The Colorado decision, 4-3, cites Gorsuch’s ruling while he was a federal judge in that state. That Gorsuch decision upheld Colorado’s decision to remove a naturalized citizen from the presidential ballot because he was born in Guyana and did not meet the constitutional requirements to run for office.

The court found that Trump also did not meet the requirements because of his role in the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. That day, the Republican president held a rally in front of the White House and urged his supporters to “fight. Like hell” before marching toward the Capitol.

A two-sentence provision in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment stated that anyone who took an oath to defend the Constitution and then “rebelled” against it was no longer eligible for state or federal office.

After Congress passed amnesty for most of the ex-confederates targeted by the measure in 1872, the provision wasn’t invoked until dozens of lawsuits were filed to keep Trump off the ballot this year. Only one was successful in Colorado.

The High Court’s decision to intervene, which both sides had requested, was Bush v. Gore in 2000, when the conservative majority effectively defeated Republican George W. Bush’s election was decided. Only Judge Clarence Thomas of that court remains.

Three of the nine Supreme Court justices were appointed by Trump, although they have repeatedly ruled against him in lawsuits related to the 2020 election, as well as his efforts to prevent the release of documents and his statements on taxes related to January 6 to congressional committees.

At the same time, Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Cavanagh were among the most conservative-leaning decisions that struck down a five-decade-old constitutional right to abortion, expanded the right to bear arms and invalidated the procedure. Positive in university admission.

Some Democratic lawmakers have called on Thomas to recuse himself from the case because of his wife’s support of Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

Thomas is unlikely to agree. He just recused himself from another 2020 election case involving former paralegal John Eastman.

Trump asked the court to overturn the Colorado ruling without hearing arguments. “The Colorado Supreme Court’s decision will unconstitutionally disenfranchise millions of voters in Colorado and will be used as a template for disenfranchising millions of voters across the country,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.

Trump’s lawyers argue that the events of January 6 do not constitute a coup. Even if so, they wrote, Trump himself did not participate in the coup. They also maintain that the Sedition Clause does not apply to the President and that Congress, not individual states, must act.

Critics of the former president who filed the lawsuit in Colorado agreed that judges should step in now and resolve the matter, as did many election law experts.