Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to reverse the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to exclude him from the state’s 2024 ballot based on the “insurrectionist clause” of the 14th Amendment.
His legal team argued that if the ruling stands, it would “mark the first time in the history of the United States that the judiciary has prevented voters from casting ballots for the leading major-party presidential candidate.”
The Colorado Supreme Court based its ruling on a post-Civil War provision of the Constitution, which bars anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding public office. The landmark decision marked the first time in history that the disqualification clause has been used to render a presidential candidate ineligible for the White House.
With the Supreme Court under intense pressure to resolve the issue of whether Trump can be disqualified from holding public office, this case poses several unique legal questions. Two of the central issues involve settling whether the language in the constitutional provision applies to individuals running for president and who gets to decide whether someone engaged in insurrection.
“In our system of ‘government of the people, by the people, [and] for the people,’ Colorado’s ruling is not and cannot be correct,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in the filing. “This Court should grant certiorari to consider this question of paramount importance.”
His team argued that the court should “return the right to vote for their candidate of choice to the voters.”
The state’s highest court overturned a prior ruling in which a judge asserted that while Trump had engaged in insurrection by inciting a riot at the Capitol, the former president is exempt from the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment, noting that it explicitly lists all federal elected positions except the presidency. The state court had already put its decision on hold allowing Trump to remain on the ballot if he appealed. The Colorado Republican Party had already appealed the state court’s opinion to the Supreme Court.
Trump has also appealed a similar decision to a Maine state court, which prohibited him from the primary ballot under the same constitutional provision in question in the Colorado case. Likewise, the decision could make its way to the Supreme Court.
“I expect that the Colorado decision will affect all the cases being raised on this issue,” Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University, told Salon. “I don’t think the Supreme Court wants to handle this issue in a piecemeal fashion.”
As Trump’s filing thrusts this explosive case into the nation’s highest judicial body, a Supreme Court with a 6-3 conservative majority – including three justices appointed by Trump himself – is poised to influence a broader initiative to disqualify the GOP presidential front-runner from other state ballots in the lead-up to the 2024 election.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the government watchdog group that brought the ballot challenge in Colorado, said it has already requested that the ourt “move quickly” to provide voters the answers they need about this “urgent question.”
Legal experts remain divided on how quickly the justices will rule on the matter and how they may ultimately reach a final decision.
But while the big question about whether or not Trump is eligible to be on the ballot is of significant importance, it’s also just as imperative that the Supreme Court answer that question in the right way, James Heilpern, practicing appellate attorney and a senior fellow at BYU Law School, told Salon.
Several examples show that both at the time of the Founding and the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, the term “officer of the United States” clearly encompassed the presidency, Heilpern pointed out, referring to his research.
These include an act of Congress that specifically identifies the president as an officer…
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