The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday declared former President Donald Trump ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause and removed him from the state’s presidential primary ballot, setting up a likely showdown in the nation’s highest court to decide whether the front-runner for the GOP nomination can remain in the race.
The decision from a court whose justices were all appointed by Democratic governors marks the first time in history that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate.
“A majority of the court holds that Trump is disqualified from holding the office of president under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,” the court wrote in its 4-3 decision.
Colorado’s highest court overturned a ruling from a district court judge who found that Trump incited an insurrection for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, but said he could not be barred from the ballot because it was unclear that the provision was intended to cover the presidency.
The court stayed its decision until Jan. 4, or until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the case.
“We do not reach these conclusions lightly,” wrote the court’s majority. “We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”
Trump’s attorneys had promised to appeal any disqualification immediately to the nation’s highest court, which has the final say about constitutional matters. His campaign said it was working on a response to the ruling.
Trump lost Colorado by 13 percentage points in 2020 and doesn’t need the state to win next year’s presidential election. But the danger for the former president is that more courts and election officials will follow Colorado’s lead and exclude Trump from must-win states.
Colorado officials say the issue must be settled by Jan. 5, the deadline for the state to print its presidential primary ballots.
Dozens of lawsuits have been filed nationally to disqualify Trump under Section 3, which was designed to keep former Confederates from returning to government after the Civil War. It bars from office anyone who swore an oath to “support” the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against it, and has been used only a handful of times since the decade after the Civil War.
The Colorado case is the first where the plaintiffs succeeded. After a weeklong hearing in November, District Judge Sarah B. Wallace found that Trump indeed had “engaged in insurrection” by inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and her ruling that kept him on the ballot was a fairly technical one.
Trump’s attorneys convinced Wallace that, because the language in Section 3 refers to “officers of the United States” who take an oath to “support” the Constitution, it must not apply to the president, who is not included as an “officer of the United States” elsewhere in the document and whose oath is to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution.
The provision also says offices covered include senator, representative, electors of the president and vice president, and all others “under the United States,” but doesn’t name the presidency.
The state’s highest court didn’t agree, siding with attorneys for six Colorado Republican and unaffiliated voters who argued that it was nonsensical to imagine the framers of the amendment, fearful of former Confederates returning to power, would bar them from low-level offices but not the highest one in the land.
“You’d be saying a rebel who took up arms against the government couldn’t be a county sheriff, but could be the president,” attorney Jason Murray said in arguments before the court in early December.
(AP)
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11 Responses
First of all, Trump was never tried and certainly not convicted of aiding or abetting an insurrection, aside from which, the goings on in the US Capitol building that occurred January 6th of ‘2021 was an ‘inside job’ largely incited by FBI operatives and others of authority that both knew of the populist plans for this beforehand, and ignored its transpiring. Anyway, such a decision would have to be given by the Supreme Court, not a State court. The Colorado State Supreme Court are absurd to arrive at this conclusion and to present it as part of their decision. They should all rot along with the other radical, self-hating and cowardly atheist democrats.
Secondly, these Constitutional clauses don’t mention the Presidency for several reasons and there is no precedent to presume to include anyone of that office.
1. Since the Colorado court was interpreting the Federal Constitution, the case can be appealed to the United States Supreme Court.
2. There are also First Amendment issues that the Supreme Court might address.
3. Technically, Donald Trump (not any other presidential candidate) is actually running for office in any state. For the primary, what is being elected are convention delegates pledged to a candidate, and in November, voters are actually voting for electors to vote as part of the Electoral College. So even if a state gets away with banning a presidential candidate (and based on current polling, one can understand why the Democrats are getting afraid that Trump will win), there are “work arounds”.
4. When American politicians pretend that the US is a third world country, it backfires. Banning the opposition is okay in Russia or Venezuela, but will turn off most Americans and help Trump politically. Also note that part of how he became president is that electing Mrs. Bill Clinton, whose only credential was her husband, seemed too alien to be tolerable.
That would make everything go longer at the polls, as many people will be manually writing in Donald Trump
Whitecar, if he’s ineligible as a candidate because of the court ruling, having the majority of the write in votes accomplishes nothing.
The Colorado Supreme Court 213 page ruling which includes dissenting opinions of 3 judges is available online for those who care to read it before voicing opinions.
Yaakov, the Colorado court can (maybe) decide which names the CO secretary of state should print on the ballot. It CANNOT decide who is actually ineligible. If Trump stays off the ballot but the majority of primary voters write him in, the CO delegates WILL vote for him. And if he is nominated but is once again kept off the CO ballot in November, but again gets a majority of the vote, the CO supreme court will not get a say on his eligibility.
Lastword, this decision is clearly wrong for at least five different reasons, but the one you give isn’t one of them. The disqualification clause doesn’t require that the candidate have been charged, let alone convicted. It was originally passed in order to keep Alexander Stevens out of Congress, and he was never charged.
The decision is wrong for at least the following reasons:
1. The Capitol riot was not an insurrection.
2. Even if it had been one, Trump did not participate in it. Contrary to the court’s claim, he did not even address the mob that stormed the Capitol, let alone tell them to do it.
3. Even if he had participated, the clause only applies to those who had taken an oath as a member of congress or a list of other offices, which does not include the presidency. The presidency is NOT an “office under the United States”; every place that term is used in the constitution it does not include the presidency.
4. Even if he’d taken an oath as a congressman, the clause only disqualifies people from a list of offices that does not include the presidency. So he’d be ineligible to be Secretary of State, but not president.
5. Even if he had participated in an insurrection, having formerly been a congressman, and was now again running for congress, the Amnesty Act of 1872 removed the disability from “all persons” with a list of exceptions. Trump is a person, and he is not on that list, so he is included in the amnesty, as is every person alive today.
6. Even if none of the above were true, a primary is an internal party event, and neither the CO secretary of state nor the CO supreme court have any right to tell the Republican Party who can contest its presidential nomination, or whom it can nominate. To do so violates the first amendment.
That’s six reasons and there are more.
“You’d be saying a rebel who took up arms against the government couldn’t be a county sheriff, but could be the president,” attorney Jason Murray said in arguments before the court in early December.
That’s right. That is what the constitution says. You don’t have to like it, but you have to obey it.
@akuperma, Hillary Clinton was the Secretary of State and has served as a US senator. She has many more credentials than Trump did when he was elected. Like it or not, she is an accomplished woman, and having been the First Lady has not erased her credentials. Frankly, given the other options, I wish she was running.
It also raises the question of whether Colorado still has a “republican” form of government, as guaranteed by the Federal constitution – since one can argue that a jurisdiction in which the opposition is legally prohibited from running for office has ceased to be democratic (think of Russia). The ultimate decision will rest with the credentials committee of the Republican Convention, and with the Congress (meaning the newly elected Congress which could vote not to accept electors chosen in an election in which the political opposition was banned).
Zaltzvasser, Hillary Clinton has NO accomplishments whatsoever, in her entire life. She has never achieved anything. Her entire career was a failure. She only got to where she was by marrying a crook, and laundering his bribes for him just as a good wife launders her husband’s underwear and socks. And the voters in 2016 recognized that.