Colorado Supreme Court Removes Trump From 2024 Ballot
If this holds (and an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court will undoubtedly be heard in the next few weeks), Trump will not be on the 2024 ballot in the state of Colorado. By overturning a lower court’s ruling, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled today that Trump is ineligible for the presidency due to the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which bans insurrectionists from being on the ballot. Via CNN:
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled to remove former President Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 ballot, ruling that he isn’t an eligible presidential candidate because of the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban.”
“Because he is disqualified, it would be wrongful act under the Election Code for the Colorado Secretary of State to list him as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot,” the court said.
Here are several of the key findings the court issued in its decision:
Colorado state law allows voters to challenge Trump’s eligibility under the federal constitution’s “insurrectionist ban.”
Colorado courts can enforce the ban without any action from Congress.
The insurrectionist ban applies to the presidency.
The January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol was an insurrection.
Trump “engaged in” the insurrection.
Trump’s speech “inciting the crowd” on January 6 was “not protected by the First Amendment.”
[CNN]
Below is the relevant insurrection text from the 14th Amendment, and while it doesn’t specifically use the word “president” to identify who would be disqualified, it does say, “No person shall…hold any office under the United States,” which would of course include the presidency. The country’s founders probably didn’t think to specifically write “No person shall be President if they engaged in insurrection” because the notion of a U.S. President overthrowing his own U.S. government would’ve been totally crazy. Also, they didn’t have to write it out specifically because it obviously goes without saying that any person who tried to stage a coup would never be allowed back in office again. The text from the 14th Amendment:
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
With regard to how Trump engaged in the January 6th insurrection, the Colorado Supreme Court writes:
President Trump’s direct and express efforts, over several months, exhorting his supporters to march to the Capitol to prevent what he falsely characterized as an alleged fraud on the people of this country were indisputably overt and voluntary. Moreover, the evidence amply showed that President Trump undertook all these actions to aid and further a common unlawful purpose that he himself conceived and set in motion: prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election and stop the peaceful transfer of power.
