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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe U.S. Supreme Court on Monday unanimously restored Donald Trump to 2024 presidential primary ballots, rejecting state attempts to hold the Republican former president accountable for the Capitol riot.
The justices ruled a day before the Super Tuesday primaries that states cannot invoke a post-Civil War constitutional provision to keep presidential candidates from appearing on ballots. That power resides with Congress, the court wrote in an unsigned opinion.
The outcome ends efforts in Colorado, Illinois, Maine and elsewhere to kick Trump, the front-runner for his party’s nomination, off the ballot because of his attempts to undo his loss in the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden, culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Trump’s case was the first at the Supreme Court dealing with a provision of the 14th Amendment that was adopted after the Civil War to prevent former officeholders who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office again.
Colorado’s Supreme Court, in a first-of-its-kind ruling, had decided that the provision, Section 3, could be applied to Trump, who that court found incited the Capitol attack. No court before had applied Section 3 to a presidential candidate.
Some election observers have warned that a ruling requiring congressional action to implement Section 3 could leave the door open to a renewed fight over trying to use the provision to disqualify Trump in the event he wins the election. In one scenario, a Democratic-controlled Congress could try to reject certifying Trump’s election on Jan. 6, 2025, under the clause.
The issue then could return to the court, possibly in the midst of a full-blown constitutional crisis.
Both sides had requested fast work by the court, which heard arguments less than a month ago, on Feb. 8. The justices seemed poised then to rule in Trump’s favor.
Trump had been kicked off the ballots in Colorado, Maine and Illinois, but all three rulings were on hold awaiting the Supreme Court’s decision.
The case is the court’s most direct involvement in a presidential election since Bush v. Gore, a decision delivered a quarter-century ago that effectively handed the 2000 election to Republican George W. Bush. And it’s just one of several cases involving Trump directly or that could affect his chances of becoming president again, including a case scheduled for arguments in late April about whether he can be criminally prosecuted on election interference charges, including his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. The timing of the high court’s intervention has raised questions about whether Trump will be tried before the November election.
The arguments in February were the first time the high court had heard a case involving Section 3. The two-sentence provision, intended to keep some Confederates from holding office again, says that those who violate oaths to support the Constitution are barred from various positions including congressional offices or serving as presidential electors. But it does not specifically mention the presidency.
Conservative and liberal justices questioned the case against Trump. Their main concern was whether Congress must act before states can invoke the 14th Amendment. There also were questions about whether the president is covered by the provision.
The lawyers for Republican and independent voters who sued to remove Trump’s name from the Colorado ballot had argued that there is ample evidence that the events of Jan. 6 constituted an insurrection and that it was incited by Trump, who had exhorted a crowd of his supporters at a rally outside the White House to “fight like hell.” They said it would be absurd to apply Section 3 to everything but the presidency or that Trump is somehow exempt. And the provision needs no enabling legislation, they argued.
Trump’s lawyers mounted several arguments for why the amendment can’t be used to keep him off the ballot. They contended the Jan. 6 riot wasn’t an insurrection and, even if it was, Trump did not go to the Capitol or join the rioters. The wording of the amendment also excludes the presidency and candidates running for president, they said. Even if all those arguments failed, they said, Congress must pass legislation to reinvigorate Section 3.
The case was decided by a court that includes three justices appointed by Trump when he was president. They have considered many Trump-related cases in recent years, declining to embrace his bogus claims of fraud in the 2020 election and refusing to shield tax records from Congress and prosecutors in New York.
The 5-4 decision in Bush v. Gore case more than 23 years ago was the last time the court was so deeply involved in presidential politics. Justice Clarence Thomas is the only member of the court who was on the bench then. Thomas has ignored calls by some Democratic lawmakers to step aside from the Trump case because his wife, Ginni, supported Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election results and attended the rally that preceded the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters.
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Though I am a “Never Trump” voter, I think the Supreme Court correctly rules on this issue. To give individual states the power to keep federal candidates off a ballot invites all sorts of mischief and unintended consequences. Had the authors of the 14th Amendment been more concise in describing when, how, and by whom it could be exercised, there’d be little if any need for the courts to interpret these matters. Despite it being a brilliant document, the Constitution is sloppily written. And 234 years later that fact still causes too many debates and disagreements.
It’s really not sloppily written, it’s too many folks trying to reinterpret it to fit their thinking or agendas.
As you said, the Surpreme Court made the right decision.
However, I disagree with your assessment that the Constitution was sloppy written
The Constitution written as it was is an incredible document of
freedoms and checks & balances.
The framers carefully considered the negative aspects of human nature
such as greed and lust for power.
The Supreme Court hears anywhere from 100 to 150 cases a year out of some 7,000 cases a year that it rejects. If the Constitution were well-written (concise, clear, and unambiguous), there should not be so many disputes over what the document means.
But the Constitution is not well-written, hence the disputes and different interpretations.
Brent B.
So what??
It still doesn’t mean that the Constitution isn’t a well written
document.
The Constitution was not meant to arbitrate every single issue.
That’s what the courts were created to do.
They made the right call. This would have been a really bad precedent for states to be able to remove a candidate.
I think the court got it half right. It is somewhat a bad precedent to allow states to remove candidates. But NOW, we are stuck with congress having to act, and you see how that worked out after the attempted Insurrection on January 6th when the insurrectionist party fell in line with their leader.
Not one person has been convicted of insurrection.
It was never an insurrection although it was pure stupidity on part
of the Trump supporters to storm the Capitol.
“It wasn’t an insurrection”
It wasn’t a well planned one or successful one, I agree.
But what would you call it when someone who loses an election (and knows he lost it, fair and square, because numerous people told him he’d lost) goes ahead and assembles a mob of people he knows are armed and encourages them to march to the place where his defeat is being made official?
And when things get wild, as he promised, he sits on his hands and lets them get wild?
And people try to say Biden is worse. Some of you spent the weekend shopping in Illinois or Michigan.
KEITH B., the 14th Amendment does not require a conviction for insurrection in order to be invoked. The event on January 6 qualifies as “an act or instance of revolting especially violently against civil or political authority” and “inciting or engaging in such revolt” – the definition “insurrection.”
Brent B.
Under your interpretation, then not not only should the January 6 th Rioters be
prosecuted for insurrection and not allowed to vote,
but leftwing BLM/Antifa rioters that attacked state houses, municipal buildings,
federal facilities, police precincts, and their attempt to breach the Supreme Court and the White
House should also be prosecuted and not allowed to vote.
Joe B.
I don’t like Biden or Trump. But it looks like that’s what we will be stuck with
for the 2024 election.
Biden is very incompetent. For starters, just look at the broken border crisis.
A crisis that Biden and the Progressives crrested.
You don’t see Biden’s failures because we have a very corrupt leftwing
national news media that threw any semblance of objectivity out the window.
During Trump’s tenure, Progressive Dems and their tradional national news media allies couldn’t get to the border fast enough or often enough.
But under Biden, they’re no where to be found.
couldn’t get to the border fast enough or often enough to scream and cry.
Trump is not the threat that Biden is.
Biden is very incompetent?
He got a heck of a lot done before Republicans retook the House and proved they aren’t qualified to run a lemonade stand.
Biden got so much done that he turned around and gave Republicans most everything they wanted to solve the border crisis, and they turned it down because it was bad politics. So you’re gonna have to try harder to continue to blame Biden for the border, or just stop watching Fox.
Trump passed a tax cut for the rich that’s been bad for folks like me and he packed the Supreme Court. That’s his accomplishments. Even things that would have been a good idea to do, like banning TikTok until China was opened to American social media companies, or fixing America’s infrastructure, Trump lost interest in doing.
Heck Biden got that infrastructure deal done while Trump fumed.
That mistaken third coronavirus stimulus bill?
Remember the bill to make chips in America?
A bill to let Medicare negotiate drug prices
You can disagree with his policies and what he got passed, but don’t try to tell me he’s incompetent.
Meanwhile Trump throws around the word dictator and claims he should have a third term. I am amazed a lot of Americans think that a second Trump term would be good for them. They might have a minority group that they loathe that they get to watch get punched down on by some Christian nationalists, but it’s not like they’re going to get more money in their pocket or better healthcare or anything tangible.
All I got from the a Trump presidency was higher taxes and an exploded deficit because several of the deductions that I used got eliminated, likely so some hedge fund billionaire could buy another private jet since we had to pay for the rich to be able to write off their private jet purchases somehow.