WASHINGTON/Xinhua
The United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled Monday that former President Donald Trump can remain on the primary ballots in Colorado, rejecting the state’s disqualification and potentially establishing national guidelines.
The nine justices, three liberals and six conservatives, agreed with the ruling.
By ruling that states lack the authority to remove Trump from the ballot due to his involvement in the events leading up to the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, the Supreme Court handed a significant victory to the former president, who is the frontrunner in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
The United States Supreme Court stated that the Colorado Supreme Court incorrectly assumed that states possess the authority to decide whether a presidential candidate is disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits persons who have participated in insurrection to occupy public office.
“Because the Constitution holds Congress, and not the states, responsible for enforcing Section 3 against all federal officials and candidates, we reverse,” the ruling states.
The most recent ruling makes clear that Congress, and not individual states, is responsible for establishing regulations regarding the application of the 14th Amendment provision. Therefore, this decision applies to all states in the United States, not just Colorado.
The result ends efforts in states such as Colorado, Illinois, Maine and others to remove Trump from the ballots due to his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
“Great win for the United States!” Trump said on his social media account shortly after the decision was announced.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold expressed disappointment in the court’s decision. “Colorado should be able to ban oath-breaking insurrectionists from our ballot,” she said on X before Twitter.
The ruling came one day before Super Tuesday, the day of the presidential primary cycle in which most states vote. This year, 15 states and one territory, including Colorado, will vote on Super Tuesday.
However, the three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor; Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, as well as Trump-appointed conservative judge Amy Coney Barrett, criticized their five conservative colleagues for going deeper than necessary into the solution to the Trump case by concluding that compliance with the 14th Amendment only can occur through legislation enacted by Congress.
“The majority announces that a disqualification for insurrection can only occur when Congress enacts a particular type of legislation pursuant to Section 5 of the 14th Amendment. By doing so, the majority closes the door to other possible means of federal compliance,” the three liberal justices indicated.
“While we agree that Colorado cannot enforce Section 3, we protest the majority’s efforts to use this case to define the limits of federal enforcement of this provision,” they added.
Barrett, Trump’s last Supreme Court appointee, wrote in a concurring opinion that in her view, “this is not the time to stridently amplify disagreement.”
“The court resolved a politically charged issue during the volatile presidential election season. Particularly in these circumstances, the Court’s briefs should lower the national temperature, not raise it,” Barrett said.
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