The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday removed Donald Trump from the 2024 presidential ballot, citing a clause on those accused of insurrection of the United States Constitution. In a 4-3 decision, the court ruled that Trump is not an eligible candidate.
It is the first time that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate. Several attempts to remove Trump from the ballot in other states failed.
The decision, which was put on hold pending an appeal until next month, only applies in Colorado. The court wrote in its ruling: “We do not reach these conclusions lightly. “We are aware of the magnitude and weight of the issues now before us.”
“We are equally aware of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions the law requires us to make.”
The ruling overturns an earlier one by a Colorado judge, who ruled that the ban commits insurrection, which includes the 14th Amendment, did not apply to presidents because the section does not explicitly name them.
That same lower court judge also found that Trump had engaged in a insurrection on the day of the Capitol riots of the United States on January 6, 2021, when his supporters stormed Congress as lawmakers were certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
The Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling will not take effect until at least January 4. That’s the eve of the deadline for the state to print its presidential primary ballots.
In a statement, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung called the ruling “completely defective” and criticized the judges, all appointed by Democratic governors.
“The leaders of the Democratic Party are in a state of paranoia due to the growing and dominant advantage that President Trump accumulated in the polls,” Cheung said. “They lost faith in the failed Biden presidency and are now doing everything they can to prevent American voters from throwing them out of office next November,” he added.
Cheung added that Trump’s legal team will “quickly file an appeal” to the US Supreme Court. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group that brought the case, welcomed the ruling.
“Not only it’s historic and it is justified, but it is necessary to protect the future of democracy in our country,” the group’s president, Noah Bookbinder, said in a statement. Similar lawsuits failed in New Hampshire, Minnesota and Michigan.
The 14th Amendment It was ratified after the American Civil War. Its Section 3 was intended to prevent secessionists from returning to government roles once the southern states again became part of the Union. It was used against Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his vice president Alexander Stephens, but has rarely been invoked since.
Trump lost the state of Colorado by a wide margin in the last presidential election. But if courts in the most competitive states followed suit with Tuesday’s ruling, Trump’s White House candidacy could face serious problems.
During a week-long trial in Colorado last month, his attorneys argued that He should not be disqualified because he was not responsible for the Capitol riots.
But in its ruling Tuesday, the majority of the Colorado Supreme Court disagreed. They said Trump’s messages before the riots were “a call to his followers to fight and … his followers responded to that call.”
Carlos Samour, one of the three judges who voted against, argued that the government could not “deprive someone of the right to hold public office without due process of law.”
“Even if we are convinced that a candidate committed horrible acts in the past – dare I say, participated in an insurrection – there must be due process before that we can declare that individual disqualified from holding public office,” he wrote.
Republican lawmakers also criticized the decision, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, who called it “a thinly veiled partisan attack.”
“Regardless of political affiliation, every citizen registered to vote should not be denied the right to support our former president and the individual who leads every Republican primary poll,” he said.
The U.S. Supreme Court is also weighing whether to take up another case involving Trump: whether he should be protected from federal charges of election subversion because of presidential immunity.
