Trump Asks Supreme Court to Keep Him on Colorado Ballot
Former President Donald J. Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to retain him on Colorado’s first ballot, and appealed an explosive statement of the state Supreme Court, finding him ineligible based on his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, which culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
The move adds to growing pressure on the U.S. Supreme Court to act, given the number of questions about Trump’s eligibility and the need for a nationwide resolution of the issue as the primaries approach.
Mr. Trump’s petition seeking review of the state court ruling followed a similar one last week of the Colorado Republican Party. The six voters who had prevailed on the Colorado Supreme Court submitted a motion to urge the judges to move the case on an exceptionally fast track.
In a special statement last week, an election official in Maine agreed with a Colorado court that Mr. Trump is ineligible for another term. Mr. Trump appealed the decision of Maine to a state court there on Tuesday. Both rulings are on hold while appeals continue, giving the U.S. Supreme Court some breathing room.
These cases involve Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Passed after the Civil War, it prohibits those who had taken an oath “to support the Constitution of the United States” from holding office if they “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies . of them.”
Congress can lift the ban, the provision says, but only with a two-thirds majority in each chamber.
With 4 to 3 votes, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in December that the provision applied to Mr. Trump, making him ineligible for another term.
“We do not come to these conclusions lightly,” the majority wrote. “We are aware of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us. We are also aware of our solemn obligation to apply the law, without fear or favour, and without being influenced by public reactions to the decisions that the law requires us to make.”
Mr. Trump’s petition attacked the ruling on many grounds. He said the events that culminated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol were not an insurrection. Even if he had, he said, he himself “would not have participated in an uprising.”
He said Article 3 did not apply to him because he had not taken the relevant oath. And he said the presidency was not one of the offices from which officials who violate the oath were barred.
More broadly, Mr. Trump’s petition argued that the state court’s ruling was the result of bias rather than reasoned judgment, and that voters, not judges, should judge whether his conduct disqualified him from a second term.
The provision has never been used to disqualify a presidential candidate, but has been the subject of cases involving other elected officials following the January 6 attacks.
A state judge in New Mexico ordered Couy Griffin, a county commissioner in Otero County, removed from office under the clause. Mr. Griffin was convicted of trespassing for entering a restricted area of the Capitol grounds during the attack.
Another state judge in Georgia, holding that the Jan. 6 attacks were an insurrection and that participating in them removed candidates from office, ruled that the actions of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, meet the standard for removal from the ballot.
The Colorado case is one of several involving Trump, affecting the Supreme Court’s role or in the offing. After an appeals court decides whether he has absolute immunity from prosecution, the justices can consider that question. And they will rule in June on the scope of a central federal election interference indictment.