Trump Asks Supreme Court to Overturn His Removal From Colorado Primary Ballot
Appeal was expected as states differ on whether 14th Amendment provision barring insurrectionists from federal office applies to former president
By Jan Wolfe and Jess Bravin for the Wall Street Journal
Updated Jan. 3, 2024 5:37 pm ET
(MG Note: There are many grounds for the US Supreme Court to overrule the Colorado and Maine actions to bar Trump from the ballot)
Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on whether the 14th Amendment bars him from being on the primary ballot in Colorado. WSJ explains the history behind the law and how its lack of jurisprudence leaves a lot of questions.
WASHINGTON—Former President Donald Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the decision by Colorado’s highest court that removed him from the state’s 2024 presidential primary ballot because of his actions surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
“In the context of the history of violent American political protests, Jan. 6 was not insurrection and thus no justification for invoking Section 3,” Trump’s brief argues, referring to the 14th Amendment provision barring individuals who engaged in insurrection or rebellion after swearing an oath to the Constitution from holding public office.
The brief cited Trump’s use of the word “peaceful” several times in his public statements on Jan. 6 to rebut findings by Colorado courts that he engaged in insurrection by encouraging a mob of his supporters to attack the Capitol where Congress was meeting to certify President Biden’s victory in the November 2020 election.
Additionally, Trump argued that it is for Congress rather than state courts to determine whether Section 3’s conditions are met and that the president shouldn’t be classified as an officer of the U.S. for 14th Amendment purposes.
The justices, the brief said, should “summarily reverse the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling, and return the right to vote for their candidate of choice to the voters.”
Eric Olson, a lawyer representing Republican and independent voters in Colorado who sought Trump’s disqualification, promised a vigorous defense of the state court’s decision. “We are reviewing Trump’s appeal and will be filing our response tomorrow to ensure the Colorado Supreme Court’s historic ruling stands,” Olson said.
Trump had said he would appeal the state court’s historic Dec. 19 ruling, which deemed him an insurrectionist and therefore ineligible to hold public office. The Colorado court halted its ruling from taking effect until Thursday to give the former president and current Republican front-runner an opportunity to appeal. The Colorado Republican Party earlier asked the Supreme Court to reverse the ruling.
The high court is widely expected to agree to hear Trump’s appeal to provide clarity on Trump’s eligibility, which has divided state judges and officials.
Michigan’s Supreme Court ruled on Dec. 27 that Trump could appear on the ballot in that closely contested state, and California has kept the former president on its primary ballot. But Maine’s top election official, a Democrat, on Dec. 28 barred Trump from appearing on that state’s primary ballot. Trump lodged an appeal of that decision in a Maine state court on Tuesday.
“The court can’t let state supreme courts make a patchwork of decisions,” said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, after Colorado’s Dec. 19 ruling. “The case brings up an important federal constitutional question with time-sensitive consequences. They will need to act, and act quickly.”
Trump’s lawyers say he was denied due process in the Colorado proceedings and is being penalized for constitutionally protected free speech. They argue the Colorado Supreme Court’s 4-3 decision sets a dangerous precedent that could embolden state election officials around the country to disqualify candidates for partisan reasons.
The Colorado case is one of a handful around the country that considered whether the Republican front-runner should be barred from the ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Enacted after the Civil War, the provision disqualifies from public office those who swore to defend the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the U.S.
The Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling threw an unexpected jolt of uncertainty into the 2024 presidential contest and placed the U.S. Supreme Court in the uncomfortable position of having to resolve unprecedented legal issues that also ignite strong political passions among the nation’s electorate, as it did in Bush v. Gore in 2000.
In the Colorado case, a group of voters alleged that Trump’s speeches, social-media posts and other statements in the run-up to Jan. 6 incited the riot, in which Trump supporters attempted to block Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election as president.
Trump’s legal team has argued the challenge and others like it are antidemocratic attempts to prevent voters from deciding the next occupant of the White House.
Michigan’s highest court declined to review lower-court rulings that deemed the insurrectionist issue a political question that couldn’t be resolved by the courts. Trump has prevailed in a handful of early rulings in other states, including in Minnesota, whose supreme court in November rejected a bid to keep Trump off the primary ballot, saying that election served the GOP’s “internal party purposes.”
