The United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously this week that former President Donald Trump could not be removed from the Colorado state Republican primary ballot. The decision will also likely cancel out the efforts of other states, including Maine and Illinois, to keep the former president from appearing on ballots.
The 9-0 decision overturned the Colorado Supreme Court decision which sought to have the former president prohibited from the ballot over a clause in the 14th Amendment.
According to the U.S. Supreme Court, only Congress could disqualify a candidate utilizing the ‘insurrection clause’ of the amendment. Colorado’s high court argued that Trump had supported ‘insurrection’ and was thus not eligible for the ballot.
The justices wrote in their decision that the 14th Amendment “expanded federal power at the expense of state autonomy and thus fundamentally altered the balance of state and federal power struck by the Constitution.”
“Granting the States that authority would invert the Fourteenth Amendment’s rebalancing of federal and state power,” read the decision.
The court also wrote that Colorado’s attorneys had not “identified any tradition of state enforcement of Section 3 against federal officeholders or candidates in the years following ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. Such a lack of historical precedent is generally a telling indication of a severe constitutional problem with the asserted power.”
Should states be able to disqualify federal candidates, the Supreme Court justices wrote that it would “sever the direct link that the Framers found so critical between the National Government and the people of the United States as a whole.”
The former president celebrated the win, calling it a “BIG WIN FOR AMERICA!” on social media.
BIG WIN FOR AMERICA!!!
Donald Trump Truth Social 10:03 AM EST 3/04/24
— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) March 4, 2024
“I want to start by thanking the Supreme Court for its unanimous decision today. It was a very important decision, were very well crafted, and I think it will go a long way toward bringing our country together, which our country needs,” said the former president. “And they worked long, they worked hard, and frankly, they worked very quickly on something that will be spoken about 100 years from now and 200 years from now. Extremely important.”
Trump’s victory in Trump v. Anderson will likely have a significant impact on future precedent in court cases, especially regarding federal elections.
