by The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether former President Donald J. Trump is eligible for Colorado’s Republican primary, putting judges in a pivotal role that could alter the course of this year’s presidential election.
The scope of the court’s ruling is likely to be broad. It will likely resolve not only whether Trump can appear on Colorado’s primary ballot after the state’s high court declared that he had engaged in an insurrection in his efforts to subvert the 2020 election, but it will also likely determine his eligibility for apply. general elections and taking office.
Since Bush v. Gore, the 2000 decision that handed the presidency to George W. Bush, the Supreme Court had not taken on such a central role in an election for the nation’s highest office.
The case will be argued on February 8 and the court will likely decide quickly. The Colorado Republican Party had urged the justices to rule by March 5, when many states, including Colorado, hold primaries.
The number of challenges to Trump’s eligibility across the country may only have added pressure on the court to hear the Colorado case, as they underscored the need for a national resolution of the issue.
The case is one of several involving or affecting Trump on the judicial agenda or on the horizon. An appeals court will hear arguments Tuesday on whether he has absolute immunity from prosecution, and the losing side will almost certainly appeal. And the court has already said it will rule on the scope of a central charge in the federal election interference case in a decision expected in June.
Trump asked the Supreme Court to intervene after Colorado’s high court disqualified him from the ballot last month. That decision is on hold while the judges consider the matter.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold pressured the Supreme Court to act quickly.
“Coloradans and the American people deserve clarity about whether someone who participated in the insurrection can run for the highest office in the land,” he said in a statement.
Trump acknowledged the court’s decision to hear the case at a rally Friday in Sioux Center, Iowa, and said he hoped the justices would interpret the law fairly. “All I want is justice; I fought very hard to bring in three very, very good people,” he said, referring to his appointees. And he added: “And I just hope they’re fair because, you know, the other side plays referee.”
The case turns on the meaning of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, which bars those who had sworn to “support the Constitution of the United States” from holding public office if they later “engaged in an insurrection.” . or rebellion against him, or given aid or comfort to his enemies.”
Congress can eliminate the ban, the provision says, but only with a two-thirds vote in each chamber.
Although Section 3 addressed the aftermath of the Civil War, it was written in general terms and, according to most scholars, remains powerful.
A Colorado trial judge ruled that Trump had participated in an insurrection, but accepted his argument that Section 3 did not apply to him, reasoning that Trump had not sworn the correct oath and that the provision did not apply to the office of The presidency.
The Colorado Supreme Court upheld the first part of the ruling: that Trump had engaged in an insurrection, including by seeking to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election; attempting to alter the vote count; encourage false lists of competing voters; pressure the vice president to violate the Constitution; and calling for the march to the Capitol.
But the majority overturned 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 insurrectionist who breaks the oath.” except the most powerful and that prohibits oath breakers from virtually all positions, both state and federal, except the tallest on earth. Both results are inconsistent with the plain language and story of Section 3.”
The State Supreme Court addressed several other issues. Congress does not need to act before courts can disqualify candidates, she said. Trump’s eligibility is not the kind of political question that is outside the jurisdiction of the courts. The House report of January 6 was properly admitted into evidence. Trump’s speech that day was not protected by the First Amendment.
The court added that states are authorized by the Constitution to evaluate the qualifications of presidential candidates. “If we were to adopt President Trump’s view,” 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.
Last month, an election official in Maine adopted much of the Colorado Supreme Court’s reasoning in excluding Trump from the primary election there. He has appealed that ruling in Maine state court.
In urging the Supreme Court to hear the Colorado case and resolve it quickly, Trump’s lawyers cited the Maine ruling.
“The Colorado Supreme Court’s decision would unconstitutionally disenfranchise millions of voters in Colorado and would likely be used as a template to disenfranchise tens of millions of voters across the country,” the attorneys wrote. “In fact, Maine’s Secretary of State, in an administrative proceeding, already used Colorado’s procedures as justification to illegally remove President Trump from that state’s ballot.”
The case, Trump vs. Anderson, No. 23-719, presents an unusually large number of intricate and overlapping legal issues, and the parties disagreed about which ones the court should address. The court’s order granting review did not specify what issues it agreed to hear. Unless you clarify things in a later order, the writings and arguments will most likely be lengthy.
Trump’s initial brief on the merits is due Jan. 18, and lawyers for the six voters who prevailed on the Colorado Supreme Court are due to respond by Jan. 31.
In their response to Trump’s petition, lawyers for voters said they counted “at least seven discrete legal and factual issues” raised by Trump, and asked the justices to limit their review to five of them.
Questions the judges will face include whether the events that culminated in the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6 were an insurrection and whether Trump participated in them. He disputed both points in his petition.
“‘Insurrection,’ as understood at the time of the passage of the 14th Amendment, meant taking up arms and making war on the United States,” the petition said, noting that the amendment had been adopted after “the The United States would have suffered a horrific civil war in which more than 600,000 combatants died and the very survival of the nation was in doubt.”
The voters’ report took the opposite view. “Trump’s intentional mobilization, incitement, and encouragement of an armed mob to attack the United States Capitol on January 6 satisfies the legal definition of ‘engaging in an insurrection,’” the brief said.
The judges can decide the case without addressing any of the issues. They could, for example, say that the issue is a political question that cannot be resolved judicially, that courts are not free to act unless Congress enacts legislation, or that Section 3 does not apply to the presidency.
Trump’s lawyers argued that Section 3, at best, disqualified people subject to it from holding public office, not running for office. If he were elected, the petition said, Congress could remove his disqualification before he began his term.
The voters’ report said the analysis defied logic. “Because Trump is not qualified to serve as president,” the brief said, “he is not a ‘qualified candidate’ under the Colorado Election Code.”
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs contributed reporting from New York, and miguel gold of Mason City, Iowa.
