WASHINGTON: The U.S. Supreme Court handed Donald Trump a major victory on Monday as he campaigns to regain the presidency, barring states from disqualifying candidates for federal office under a constitutional provision involving insurrection and reversing a judicial decision that had excluded him from Colorado’s ballot.
The justices unanimously reversed a Dec. 19 decision by Colorado’s top court to kick Trump off the state’s Republican primary ballot on Tuesday after finding that the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment disqualified him from again holding public office. The Colorado court had found that Trump took part in an insurrection for inciting and supporting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.
Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic President Joe Biden in the Nov. 5 U.S. election. His only remaining rival for his party’s nomination is former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley.
The ruling came on the eve of Super Tuesday, the day in the U.S. presidential primary cycle when the most states hold party nominating contests.
“BIG WIN FOR AMERICA!!!,” Trump wrote on his social media platform immediately after the ruling.
The 14th Amendment’s Section 3 bars from office any “officer of the United States” who took an oath “to support the Constitution of the United States” and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
“We conclude that states may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office. But states have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the presidency,” the unsigned opinion for the court stated.
The justices found that only Congress can enforce the provision against federal officeholders and candidates.
Though the justices unanimously agreed with the result, the court’s three liberal justices, as well as conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, said the court’s opinion decided more than what was necessary to resolve the case.
“We cannot join an opinion that decides momentous and difficult issues unnecessarily, and we therefore concur only in the judgment,” liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote.
“In my judgment, this is not the time to amplify disagreement with stridency. The court has settled a politically charged issue in the volatile season of a presidential election. Particularly in this circumstance, writings on the court should turn the national temperature down, not up,” Barrett wrote.
