US supreme court to issue ruling as Trump Colorado ballot case looms
The US supreme court plans to issue at least one ruling on Monday, the day before Colorado holds a presidential primary election in which a lower court kicked Republican frontrunner Donald Trump off the ballot for taking part in an insurrection during the 6 January 2021 US Capitol attack.
The supreme court, in an unusual
Sunday update to its schedule, did not specify what ruling it would issue. But the justices on 8 February heard arguments in Trump’s appeal of the Colorado ruling and are due to issue their own decision.
Colorado is one of 15 states and a US territory holding primary elections on “Super Tuesday”. Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic President Joe Biden in the 5 November election.
The Republican party of Colorado has asked the supreme court, whose 6-3 conservative majority include three justices appointed by Trump, to rule before Tuesday in the ballot eligibility case.
During arguments, supreme court justices signaled sympathy toward Trump’s appeal of a 19 December ruling by Colorado’s top court to disqualify him from the state’s ballot under the US constitution’s 14th amendment.
Section 3 of the 14th amendment bars from holding public office any “officer 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”.
Trump supporters attacked police and swarmed the Capitol in a bid to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s
2020 election victory. Trump gave an incendiary speech to supporters beforehand, telling them to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell”. He then for hours rebuffed requests that he urge the mob to stop.
Anti-Trump forces have sought to disqualify him in more than two dozen other states – a mostly unsuccessful effort – over his actions relating to the
January 6 attack. Maine and Illinois also have barred Trump from their ballot, though both those decisions are on hold pending the supreme court’s Colorado ruling.
During arguments in the Colorado case, supreme court justices – conservatives and liberals alike – expressed concern about states taking sweeping actions that could impact a presidential election nationwide.
They pondered how states can properly enforce the section 3 disqualification language against candidates, with several wondering whether Congress must first pass legislation do enable that.