On Monday, the United States Supreme Court unanimously overturned a state court finding that may have prohibited Donald Trump from running for president for engaging in insurrection.
The high-stakes decision in favor of the former president came on the eve of the Super Tuesday primaries, which are likely to solidify Trump’s path to the Republican nomination to face President Joe Biden in November.
It was the court’s most critical election case since it halted the Florida vote recount in 2000, when Republican George W. Bush was just ahead of Democrat Al Gore.
The nine justices debated whether Trump was ineligible to run on Colorado’s Republican presidential primary ballot since he participated in an insurrection — his followers’ assault on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The conservative-dominated court ruled 9-0 that “the judgment of the Colorado Supreme Court… cannot stand,” allowing 77-year-old Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to appear on the state’s primary ballot.
“All nine Members of the Court agree with that result,” they said in a statement.
The issue resulted from a December ruling by Colorado’s state Supreme Court, one of the 15 states and territories voting on Super Tuesday.
The court, using the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, determined that Trump should be removed from the ballot for his role in the January 6 attack on Congress, when a crowd attempted to block the certification of Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment prohibits anybody from holding public office if they participated in “insurrection or rebellion” after previously promising to support and protect the Constitution.
However, during two hours of debate last month, both conservative and liberal justices on the US Supreme Court expressed concern about allowing individual states to pick which candidates can appear on the presidential ballot in November.
On Monday, the Supreme Court concluded that “the responsibility for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates rests with Congress, not the states.”
Multiple additional cases
The 14th Amendment, passed in 1868 during the Civil War, sought to bar supporters of the slave-owning breakaway Confederacy from being elected to Congress or holding federal offices.
The Supreme Court, which contains three justices selected by Trump, has always avoided political issues, but it is taking center stage in this year’s presidential election.
Aside from the Colorado case, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear Trump’s argument that as a former president, he is immune from criminal prosecution and cannot be indicted on separate accusations of plotting to overthrow the 2020 election.
The Democratic-majority House of Representatives impeached Trump for encouraging an insurrection, but he was acquitted due to Republican support in the Senate.
He is also due to stand trial in New York on March 25 on allegations of concealing hush money payments to a porn star prior to the 2016 election.
In yet another case, Trump faces federal charges in Florida for refusing to turn over top-secret information after leaving the White House.
During oral arguments in the Colorado case, Jonathan Mitchell, a former Texas solicitor general supporting Trump, urged the court to reject the Colorado court’s ruling, claiming it would “take away the votes of potentially tens of millions of Americans.”
Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative, warned that maintaining the state court decision could result in “disqualification proceedings on the other side.”
“I would expect that a goodly number of states will say ‘Whoever the Democratic candidate is, you’re off the ballot,’” Roberts said.