#SupremeCourt rules #states #cannot #remove #Trump from ballot for insurrection https://t.co/YglswX2Yq4
— Guillermo Ruiz Zapatero (@ruiz_zapatero) March 4, 2024
Only Congress – and not the states – can enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, to disqualify individuals from holding office
The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that states cannot disqualify former President Donald Trump from the ballot for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol. In an unsigned opinion, a majority of the justices held that only Congress – and not the states – can enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which was enacted in the wake of the Civil War to disqualify individuals from holding office who had previously served in the federal or state government before the war but then supported the Confederacy, against candidates for federal offices.
All nine justices agreed that Colorado cannot remove Trump from the ballot. But four justices – Justice Amy Coney Barrett in a separate opinion and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson in a joint opinion – argued that their colleagues should have stopped there and not decided anything more.
The court’s decision comes just one day before Super Tuesday, when 16 states and one territory will hold their primary elections. Trump currently holds an overwhelming lead in the race for the Republican nomination.
The dispute leading to Monday’s opinion began last year in a state court in Colorado. A group of voters in that state argued that Trump was ineligible to appear on the ballot under Section 3, which provides (as relevant here) that no one “shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State,” if that person had previously sworn, “as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States,” to support the Constitution but then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the federal government.
A state trial court concluded that Trump had “engaged in insurrection,” but it rejected the voters’ request to remove him from the ballot. The presidency, that court ruled, is not an “office … under the United States,” and the president is not an “officer of the United States.”
The voters appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court, which agreed that Trump is ineligible to appear on the ballot under Section 3. But that court put its ruling on hold to give Trump time to go to the Supreme Court, which agreed early this year to weigh in.
In a 13-page unsigned opinion released shortly after 10 a.m., the justices reversed the state supreme court’s decision. The justices explained that the 14th Amendment was intended to expand the federal government’s power at the states’ expense. And in particular, they noted, Section 3 was designed to “help ensure an enduring Union by preventing former Confederates from returning to power in the aftermath of the Civil War.”
But before disqualifying someone under Section 3, the justices observed, there must be a determination that the provision actually applies to that person. And Section 5 of the 14th Amendment gives the power to make that determination to Congress, by authorizing it to pass “appropriate legislation” to “enforce” the 14th Amendment. Nothing in the 14th Amendment, the court stressed, gives states the power to enforce Section 3 against candidates for federal office, nor was there any history of states doing so in the years after the amendment was ratified.ke that determination to Congress, by authorizing it to pass “appropriate
Monday’s decision comes less than a week after the justices agreed to take up another case involving the former president. On Wednesday, the justices announced that they will hear argument in late April on whether Trump can be tried on charges that he conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election. That decision is expected by late June or early July.
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