The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled Monday that Donald Trump should appear on Colorado’s presidential primary ballot and that any votes cast for him be counted, rejecting a Colorado Supreme Court finding that the Republican is disqualified from running for president again because he violated the so-called insurrection clause in the Constitution.
The high court’s justices ruled that when it comes to presidential and other federal candidates, Congress, not states, are responsible for enforcing the clause, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. The section bars “officers of the United States” who took an “oath … to support the Constitution of the United States” and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof” from holding federal or state office again.
“We conclude that states may disqualify persons holding or attempting
to hold state office,” the court’s unsigned, 13-page opinion said. “But states have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the presidency.”
The justices reasoned that “state-by-state resolution of the question
whether Section 3 bars a particular candidate for president from serving would be quite unlikely to yield a uniform answer.”
“Conflicting state outcomes concerning the same candidate could result not just from differing views of the merits, but from variations in state law governing the proceedings that are necessary to make Section 3 disqualification determinations,” the opinion said. “Some States might allow a Section 3 challenge to succeed based on a preponderance of the evidence, while others might require a heightened showing.”
Further, a majority of the justices found that Congress would have to pass specific legislation to enforce Section 3 of the 14th amendment.
The decision, which all but settles similar challenges to Trump’s 2024 campaign across the country, comes one day before Super Tuesday, when Colorado and 14 other states will hold their presidential primary elections. It is the court’s most consequential political ruling since 2000, when its ruling in Bush v. Gore resulted in George W. Bush winning the White House.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat and Colorado’s top election official, wrote on social media that she was disappointed by the ruing. She said states should be able to enforce the insurrection clause.
“Colorado should be able to bar oath-breaking insurrections from our ballot,” she added.
I am disappointed in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision stripping states of the authority to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment for federal candidates. Colorado should be able to bar oath-breaking insurrections from our ballot.
— Jena Griswold (@JenaGriswold) March 4, 2024
The Colorado GOP celebrated the ruling, calling it a “massive victory.”
Trump on his Truth Social network posted, “BIG WIN FOR AMERICA!!!”
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative appointed to the court by Trump, took issue with the majority’s finding that Congress would have to pass a bill to enforce the insurrection clause. She didn’t elaborate on that position – “this is not the time to amplify disagreement with stridency” – but, she added in a concurring opinion, that “all nine justices agree on the outcome of this case. That is the message Americans should take home.”
Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, in their own concurring opinion, plainly disagreed that federal legislation had to be passed for Congress to enforce the insurrection clause.
“Although federal enforcement of Section 3 is in no way at issue, the majority announces novel rules for how that enforcement must operate,” the three justices wrote. “It reaches out to decide Section 3 questions not before us, and to foreclose future efforts to disqualify a Presidential candidate under that provision. In a sensitive case crying out for judicial restraint, it abandons that course.”
In its majority opinion, the court didn’t acknowledge arguments from the Trump campaign that he shouldn’t be barred from the ballot because the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol didn’t constitute an insurrection or that the insurrection clause doesn’t apply to the presidency.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling stems from a lawsuit seeking to block Trump from appearing on Colorado’s Republican presidential primary ballot filed in Denver District Court in September. The challenge was submitted by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal political nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., on behalf of a group of Colorado Republican and unaffiliated voters.
The lead plaintiff was Republican Norma Anderson, a former top state lawmaker. The defendant was Griswold.
The nonprofit, which doesn’t reveal its donors, argued that Trump incited, and therefor engaged in an insurrection when his supporters stormed at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, and is therefore ineligible to appear on the GOP presidential primary ballot in March under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which was adopted in the wake of the Civil War.
Denver District Court Judge Sarah Wallace ruled Nov. 17 that while Trump did incite an insurrection on Jan. 6, he can still appear on Colorado’s 2024 Republican presidential primary ballot because he is not an “officer of the United States.”
“Part of the court’s decision is its reluctance to embrace an interpretation which would disqualify a presidential candidate without a clear, unmistakable indication that such is the intent of Section 3,” Wallace wrote.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington appealed the ruling to the Colorado Supreme Court, arguing that a president is an “officer of the United States.” Trump’s 2024 campaign also appealed, seeking to invalidate Wallace’s finding that Trump engaged in an insurrection and arguing that state courts don’t have the power to rule on 14th Amendment challenges.
The Colorado Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case Dec. 6 and issued a 4-3 ruling about two weeks later that reversed Wallace’s opinion by finding that Trump is an officer of the United States. The court agreed that Trump engaged in an insurrection and rejected the notion that Wallace lacked authority to hear the case.
“The record amply established that the events of Jan. 6 constituted a concerted and public use of force or threat of force by a group of people to hinder or prevent the U.S. government from taking the actions necessary to accomplish the peaceful transfer of power in this country,” Justices Monica Márquez, William Hood, Richard Gabriel and Melissa Hart wrote in the Colorado Supreme Court’s 132-page majority opinion. “Under any viable definition, this constituted an insurrection.”
The Colorado GOP and Trump’s 2024 campaign appealed the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, which had the effect of staying the Colorado decision. And because of Colorado’s presidential primary ballot-certification deadline in early January, Trump’s name was printed on the ballot.
The nation’s high court heard oral arguments in the case Feb. 8.
It was clear during the oral arguments that both the court’s conservative and liberal justices doubted the arguments made on behalf of the Colorado Republican and unaffiliated voters who brought the case. Namely, they appeared to believe that invoking the insurrection clause should be left up to Congress and not states.
Justice Barrett put it plainly: “It just doesn’t seem like a state call.”
Even Justice Kagan, considered one of the most liberal justices on the court, raised concerns about letting states make determinations about presidential candidates’ ability to run for office under the insurrection clause.
“I think the question that you have to confront is why a single state would decide who gets to be president of the United States,” she said, nodding to how a decision in the Colorado case would likely affect similar legal challenges to Trump’s candidacy across the nation. “It sounds awfully national to me. … One state’s decision to take a candidate off the ballot affects everybody else’s rights.”
Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington saw a silver lining in the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling Monday.
“There is not a single sentence in the Supreme Court’s (ruling) that disagrees with the finding that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection on January 6, 2021,” the nonprofit said on social media. “They could have easily cleared him. They chose not to. That’s a big deal.
There is not a single sentence in the Supreme Court's 14th Amendment that disagrees with the finding that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection on January 6, 2021.
— Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) March 4, 2024
They could have easily cleared him. They chose not to. That's a big deal.
In a written statement, Anderson said the ruling doesn’t change “this fact: Donald Trump engaged in insurrection against the United States Constitution.”
She added: “I urge my fellow Republicans to recognize the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy and do the same. My fellow plaintiffs and I are proud to have brought this case, and look forward to continuing the work of protecting our democracy.”
One of the attorneys for the Colorado plaintiffs is Mario Nicolais, who is a Colorado Sun columnist.
Free Speech For People, another political nonprofit that challenged Trump’s ability to run for reelection in 2024 under the insurrection clause, said in a written statement that the U.S. Supreme Court “made a mockery of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”
“This dangerous ruling encourages Trump – and those who follow his example – to engage in more insurrections and disregard more broadly the Constitution,” the statement said.
In terms of electoral consequences in the Colorado, the Supreme Court’s ruling shouldn’t matter much.
Trump lost the state in 2016 and 2020 – most recently to Joe Biden by 13 percentage points. It’s highly unlikely he would win in 2024 in Colorado, where Republicans have no statewide elected officials and are in a historic minority at the state Capitol.
