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US Supreme Court allows Trump to remain on primary ballots
The News
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled Monday that Donald Trump can remain on the Colorado presidential primary ballot, overturning a ruling in that state that prohibited him from running.
The Colorado Supreme Court court declared in December that Trump was ineligible to be president again under the Constitution’s insurrection clause, finding that he incited an insurrection in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Trump appealed that ruling, and the nation’s highest court agreed with his argument that a single state cannot disqualify a candidate from running for president. That decision about eligibility, the justices said, should be left up to Congress.
Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer for Trump in the case, said in a statement that Colorado’s “attempt to use the 14th Amendment in this manner was a dangerous overreach that, if left unchallenged, could have set a perilous precedent for future election.”
A lawyer for the plaintiffs who brought the case in Colorado to remove Trump from the ballot told The New York Times that the justices ”abrogated their responsibility to our democracy,” adding that the case had brought “direction on where to go.”
Trump has faced eligibility challenges in dozens of states under the insurrection clause. The Supreme Court’s ruling didn’t touch on whether Trump incited an insurrection, but instead focused on whether a state has the ability to bar someone from running for president.
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Both sides seek to claim victory after SCOTUS avoids insurrection question
The Supreme Court justices declined to resolve one of the key political questions surrounding the case — whether Trump engaged in insurrection — leaving both sides seeking to claim a victory. Speaking at his Florida residence of Mar-a-Lago, Trump welcomed the court’s decision. “Voters can take someone out of the race very quickly, but a court shouldn’t be doing that,” he said.
Although the former president succeeded in his battle to overcome legal technicalities to get himself restored to the ballot, “he lost on the bigger question of whether he’d be absolved of being an insurrectionist,” Ian Bassin, executive director of Protect Democracy, a non-profit founded by former Obama staffers, wrote on X. “On that question the Court has now passed the ball to all Americans to ultimately decide,” Bassin added. Meanwhile, the leader of the advocacy group that brought the Colorado case said that “the Supreme Court had the opportunity in this case to exonerate Trump, and they chose not to do so.”
Court’s decision bolsters Trump ahead of Super Tuesday
The ruling gives a major – albeit expected – boost for Trump on the eve of Super Tuesday, when 15 states, including Colorado, hold primary elections in which the former president is likely to dominate. His last remaining GOP rival, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, won her first presidential primary on Sunday in Washington, D.C. carrying 63% of the vote.
But it’s unlikely to sway the course of what is expected to be a landslide victory for Trump in the Tuesday contests, with pundits already speculating whether Haley will drop out immediately or continue on through July. While Haley has remained defiant saying she will campaign “until the last person votes,” the question of her survival as a presidential candidate “may depend less on her willpower and more on her donors,” a Republican strategist wrote for MSNBC.
Ruling will end state efforts to disqualify Trump – and may fuel his campaign
The Supreme Court’s ruling will likely end efforts by other states to disqualify Trump from their ballots — and may even help the former president in his reelection bid. Hours after the ruling, the Secretary of State for Maine — which holds its Republican primary Tuesday — withdrew a previous decision to kick Trump off the ballot, the Maine Morning Star reported. Shenna Bellows said she was obliged to follow the highest court’s ruling. It also ends a similar effort by Illinois, which votes on March 19.
The “ironic result” of the ruling is that “a constitutional provision meant to ban insurrectionists from holding office will provide Trump with fuel” in his bid for the White House, Elie Honig, a former federal and state prosecutor wrote for New York Magazine’s Intelligencer site. “He and his supporters surely will rally around a failed effort by a bunch of Northeastern, elitist law-professor types to use the courts to deny the American voters a choice and to take out the Republican front-runner,” he wrote.
