The Supreme Court will decide whether former President Donald Trump can be kept off state presidential ballots after the Colorado Supreme Court found he had violated the Constitution’s so-called “Insurrection Clause.”
In a brief order Friday evening, the high court announced it will hear arguments Feb. 8 in the 77-year-old’s challenge to the Centennial State ruling, which temporarily removed from the state’s March 5 Republican primary ballot.
With voters already casting ballots in primaries and caucuses across the country by the time the case is heard, a decision is likely to follow quickly.
The Colorado decision, handed down Dec. 19, had cited Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results that led to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot as proof that he violated Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars those who have violated their oath of office and “engaged in insurrection” from holding high office again.
In an appeal filed Wednesday, Trump’s attorneys had argued that “[i]n our system of ‘government of the people, by the people, [and] for the people,’ Colorado’s ruling is not and cannot be correct.”
“The question of eligibility to serve as President of the United States is properly reserved for Congress, not the state courts, to consider and decide,” the filing added.
“By considering the question of President Trump’s eligibility and barring him from the ballot, the Colorado Supreme Court arrogated Congress’ authority.”
The former president’s legal team argued for the Colorado decision to be reversed on three grounds: First, that the presidency was not among the offices covered by Section 3; second, that the Colorado Supreme Court had wrongly described the 45th president as having “engaged” in that day’s violence; and third, that the court violated the Constitution by intervening in the matter at all. --->READ MORE HERE
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| Photograph: Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty Images |
The US supreme court will hear Donald Trump’s appeal of the Colorado ruling that he should be removed from the state ballot under the 14th amendment to the US constitution, for inciting an insurrection.
The court issued a brief order on Friday, setting up a dramatic moment in American history.
The case will be argued on 8 February. As the Republican presidential primary will then be well under way, with Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada having voted – and as Trump has also been disqualified from the ballot in Maine, a ruling appealed in state court – a quick decision is expected.
The Colorado primary is set for 5 March. The state government must begin mailing ballots to overseas voters on 20 January and to all others between 12 and 16 February. The ruling suspending Trump is stayed, however, as long as the supreme court appeal is ongoing.
In the year of a high-stakes presidential election, the case is set to move rapidly, under a fierce spotlight. Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, said that with “oral argument set for 8 February, the appeal will be extremely expedited … thus, briefs will probably be due as soon as possible, maybe [in] a week or 10 days for each side.”
The 14th amendment was approved after the civil war, meant to bar from office supporters of the rebel Confederate states. But it has rarely been used. Cases against Trump were mounted after he was impeached but acquitted by the Senate over the attack on Congress by his supporters on 6 January 2021, then swiftly came to dominate the Republican presidential primary for 2024, all while maintaining the lie that his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020 was the result of electoral fraud. 1
Fourteenth-amendment challenges to Trump in other states have either failed or remain undecided.
The Colorado supreme court ruled against Trump on 19 December but stayed the ruling until 4 January, pending appeal. That appeal came earlier this week, Trump’s lawyers arguing that only Congress could arbitrate such disputes and saying the relevant text in the 14th amendment – in section 3 – did not apply to the presidency or vice-presidency as they are not mentioned therein. --->READ MORE HERE
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