Colorado Supreme Court rules Trump disqualified
Colorado’s top court ruled on Tuesday that former President Donald Trump is disqualified from holding office again because he engaged in insurrection with his actions leading up to the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol, an explosive ruling that is likely to put the basic contours of the 2024 election in the hands of the Supreme Court of the United States.
The Colorado Supreme Court was the first in the nation to find that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment — which disqualifies people who engage in insurrection against the Constitution after taking an oath to support it — applies to Trump, an argument that his opponents have been making around the country.
Trump’s campaign said immediately that it would appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, a likelihood that the Colorado justices anticipated by putting their ruling on hold until January. And while Tuesday’s ruling applies only to one state, it could all but force the nation’s highest court to decide the question for all 50.
If the justices take up the case, it will join a pile of other Trump-related matters they have agreed to decide, including whether he is immune from criminal prosecution for actions he took in office and the scope of an obstruction charge that is central to his federal Jan. 6 case.
In the Colorado court’s lengthy ruling Tuesday ordering the Colorado secretary of state to exclude Trump from the state’s Republican primary ballot, the justices there reversed a Denver district judge’s finding last month that Section 3 did not apply to the presidency.
They affirmed the district judge’s other key conclusions: that Trump’s actions before and on Jan. 6, 2021, constituted engaging in insurrection, and that courts had the authority to enforce Section 3 against a person whom Congress had not specifically designated.
“A majority of the court holds that President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of president under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” the justices wrote in a 4-3 ruling. “Because he is disqualified, it would be a wrongful act under the Election Code for the Colorado Secretary of State to list him as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot.”
“We do not reach these conclusions lightly,” the majority wrote. “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.”
Similar lawsuits in Minnesota and New Hampshire were dismissed on procedural grounds. A judge in Michigan ruled last month that the issue was political and not for him to decide, and an appeals court affirmed the decision not to disqualify him. The plaintiffs there have appealed to the Michigan Supreme Court.
Tuesday’s ruling “is not only historic and justified, but is necessary to protect the future of democracy in our country,” Noah Bookbinder, the president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said in a statement. His organization represented the voters seeking to disqualify Trump.
Trump’s campaign denounced the ruling.
“Unsurprisingly, the all-Democrat appointed Colorado Supreme Court has ruled against President Trump, supporting a Soros-funded, leftwing group’s scheme to interfere in an election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden by removing President Trump’s name from the ballot and eliminating the rights of Colorado voters to vote for the candidate of their choice,” a campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, said. “We have full confidence that the U.S. Supreme Court will quickly rule in our favor and finally put an end to these un-American lawsuits.”
The case hinged on several questions: Was it an insurrection when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, trying to stop the certification of the 2020 election? If so, did Trump engage in that insurrection through his messages to his supporters beforehand, his speech that morning and his social media posts during the attack? Do courts have the authority to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment without congressional action? And does Section 3 apply to the presidency?
Judge Sarah B. Wallace, who made the district court ruling in Colorado, had said yes to all but the last question.
Because Section 3 enumerates several offices but not the presidency, and because the presidential oath is worded differently from the oaths of the enumerated offices, Wallace concluded that the broad phrase “officers of the United States” was not intended to include the presidency. The Colorado Supreme Court disagreed.
“We do not place the same weight the district court did on the fact that the presidency is not specifically mentioned in Section Three,” the justices wrote. “It seems most likely that the presidency is not specifically included because it is so evidently an ‘office.’”