Judges must decide Trump’s eligibility for Colorado voting
The Supreme Court on Friday decided to rule on whether former President Donald J. Trump is ineligible to run in Colorado’s Republican primary because he was involved in an insurrection in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The case, which could change the course of this year’s presidential election, will be heard on February 8. The court will likely decide quickly as the primaries will start soon.
Mr Trump asked the Supreme Court to intervene after the Colorado Supreme Court barred him from voting last month. That decision is on hold while the judges investigate the case.
The case centers on the meaning of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, which prohibits those who had taken an oath “in support of the Constitution of the United States” from holding office if they “have engaged in insurrection ”. or rebellion against it, or aid or comfort given to its enemies.
Congress can lift the ban, the provision says, but only with a two-thirds majority in each chamber.
Although Chapter 3 dealt with the aftermath of the Civil War, it was written in general terms and, according to most scholars, remains valid today. Congress granted broad amnesties in 1872 and 1898. But these acts were retroactive, scholars say, and did not limit the provision’s future power.
A judge in Colorado ruled that Mr. Trump was guilty of insurrection, but accepted his argument that Section 3 did not apply to him. He reasoned that Mr. Trump had not taken the right kind of oath and that the provision did not apply to the office of president. The Presidency.
The Colorado Supreme Court upheld the first part of the ruling – that Mr. Trump engaged in an insurrection, including by overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election; trying to change the number of votes; encouraging false slates from competing voters; pressuring the vice president to violate the Constitution; and called for the march on the Capitol.
But the majority reversed the part of the decision that said Section 3 did not apply to the presidency.
“President Trump asks us to hold,” the majority wrote in an unsigned opinion, “that Section 3 disqualifies any oath-breaking insurrectionist.” except the most powerful and that it bans oathbreakers from virtually every office, state and federal, except the highest in the country. Both results are inconsistent with the plain language and history of Section 3.”
The state Supreme Court has addressed a number of other issues. Congress does not need to act for the courts to disqualify candidates, the report said. Mr. Trump’s eligibility is not the kind of political issue that falls outside the jurisdiction of the courts. The report of the House of Representatives of January 6 was rightly admitted into evidence. Mr. Trump’s speech that day was not protected by the First Amendment.
The Court added that states have the authority under the Constitution to assess the qualifications of presidential candidates. “If we were to adopt President Trump’s position,” the majority wrote, “Colorado would not be able to exclude from the ballot even candidates who clearly do not meet the age, residency, and citizenship requirements” of the Constitution.
An election official in Maine last month adopted much of the Colorado Supreme Court’s reasoning in excluding Mr. Trump from the primary vote there. He has appealed that ruling to a state court in Maine.