Colorado Ballot Must Retain Trump, Says Court

The US Supreme Court made a bold decision on Monday and ruled that the Colorado ballot must allow Donald Trump to remain as a presidential candidate.

Politics :
In December of 2023, the Colorado Supreme Court declared that because of his participation in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill insurrection, Donald Trump was ineligible to appear on the state’s presidential primary ballot as per the 14th Amendment.  

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution prevents anyone from holding federal office if they took an oath to support the Constitution but then betrayed it by engaging in an insurrection. 

However, on Monday, the US Supreme Court overruled the Colorado Supreme Court and declared that the Colorado ballot and every other state ballot must include Donald Trump as a presidential candidate.

Not only did Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, and Brett Kavanaugh decide that states may not eliminate Trump from their ballots, but they also concluded that Congress is the only body allowed to enforce the insurrection clause against federal candidates. Or, in other words, if Donald Trump or any of the insurrectionists who participated in the Jan. 6th attacks ever decide to run for future federal office, only Congress (and not states) can prevent their candidacy.

Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson agreed that Colorado’s decision needed to be reversed in order to prevent a “chaotic state-by-state patchwork at odds with our Nation’s federalism principle.” However, they disagreed with their colleagues on the depth of their decision and aired their criticism in a separate concurring opinion.

“Today, the majority goes beyond the necessities of this case to limit how Section 3 can bar an oathbreaking insurrectionist from becoming President,” the 3 justices wrote. “Although we agree that Colorado cannot enforce Section 3, we protest the majority’s effort to use this case to define the limits of federal enforcement of that provision.”

The justices continued by claiming that the high court’s decision should have ended there.

“Yet the majority goes further … They decide novel constitutional questions to insulate this Court and petitioner from future controversy,” they wrote. “Although only an individual State’s action is at issue here, the majority opines on which federal actors can enforce Section 3, and how they must do so.

“Section 3 serves an important, though rarely needed, role in our democracy. The American people have the power to vote for and elect candidates for national office, and that is a great and glorious thing. The men who drafted and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, however, had witnessed an “insurrection [and] rebellion” to defend slavery. They wanted to ensure that those who had participated in that insurrection, and in possible future insurrections, could not return to prominent roles. Today, the majority goes beyond the necessities of this case to limit how Section 3 can bar an oathbreaking insurrectionist from becoming President.”

They added: “The majority shuts the door on other potential means of federal enforcement. We cannot join an opinion that decides momentous and difficult issues unnecessarily, and we therefore concur only in the judgment.”

So, Donald Trump wins again. Despite his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection to dismantle democracy and erase the results of a legitimate election, he will remain on the Colorado ballot and every other state ballot for president from this day forward.

OK WASSUP! discusses Politics:
Trump must remain on the Colorado ballot