The Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Donald Trump had no intention of insurrection and is unlikely to appear on Maine’s Primary Voting ballot

Although federal enforcement of Section 3 is in no way at issue, the opinion said that the majority announced novel rules for how that enforcement must operate. It reaches out to decide Section 3 questions not before us, and to foreclose future efforts to disqualify a presidential candidate under that provision. In a sensitive case that is crying out for judicial restraint, it abandons that course.

Though the justices provided different reasons, the decision’s bottom line was unanimous. All the opinions focused on legal issues, and none took a position on whether Mr. Trump had engaged in insurrection, as Colorado courts had found.

“Because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the States, responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates, we reverse,” the court decision concluded.

The question about Trump’s disqualification in Colorado has been playing out in different ways in dozens of other states. Maine’s secretary of state found that Trump is disqualified from appearing on Maine’s primary ballot, but the decision was stayed pending Trump’s appeal. A judge in Illinois also barred Trump but paused her ruling pending action from the Supreme Court.

Resolving the Majority Opposing Section 3 in the Early Stage of a Pre-Surrection Insurrection: A Forensic Analysis

They gave some examples of ways in which the majority opinion undermined the force of Section 3. They wrote that a majority of the people wanted judicial enforcement to close when a party is prosecuted by an insurrectionist. The three justices wrote that in requiring tailored legislation from Congress, the majority seemed to be making it difficult for the government to comply with the law.

The decision was produced on a rushed schedule, landing the day before the Super Tuesday primaries in Colorado and around the nation. The court didn’t announce that it would issue an opinion until Sunday, and did not take the bench to do so on Monday in order to post the decision on its website.

In an interview on a conservative radio program, Mr. Trump said he was pleased by the outcome. He said he was honored by a nine-to-nothing vote. This is for future presidents; it’s not for me.

An earlier version of the decision suggested that the gap between the majority and the three liberal justices had once been even wider. As noted by Mark Joseph Stern, a legal affairs reporter with Slate, a forensic examination of the decision posted on the court’s website appeared to show that what eventually became the joint concurring opinion was once a partial dissent attributed to “Sotomayor, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part.”

It was apparent that the compromise resulted in the justices agreeing to be united on a narrow bottom line. Still, the scope of the majority opinion was the subject of harsh criticism from the liberal justices.

“The court today needed to resolve only a single question: whether an individual state may keep a presidential candidate found to have engaged in insurrection off its ballot,” they wrote. The majority resolves more of the case than we did.

She said this was not the time to amplify disagreement with stridency. During the volatile season of a presidential election, the court has settled a politically charged issue. Particularly in this circumstance, writings on the court should turn the national temperature down, not up.

Changing electoral map could change voters’ behavior in a variety of ways and at different times. “The disruption would be all the more acute — and could nullify the votes of millions and change the election result — if Section 3 enforcement were attempted after the nation has voted. Nothing in the Constitution requires that we endure such chaos — arriving at any time or different times, up to and perhaps beyond the inauguration.”

The Colorado Supreme Court reversed the trial judge’s decision that section 3 did not apply to the president or the presidency.

Mr. Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene, setting out more than half a dozen arguments about why the state court had gone astray and saying his removal would override the will of the voters.

His primary argument in the U.S. Supreme Court was that the president was not one of the officials covered by Section 3, which does not mention that office by name. That argument did not attract votes on Monday.

The unanimous decision came only weeks after the justices heard oral arguments in the politically sensitive case that put the high court in the middle of the 2024 presidential election. It came a week later when the court stated it would hear arguments in the case that asks whether Trump is immune from prosecution for his actions on January 6.

The ruling made clear that lawmakers after the Civil War intended the 14th Amendment to expand federal power, at the expense of the states, and that the Constitution “empowers Congress” to determine how to use the “severe” penalty of disqualification.

The final ruling following oral argument is not that different from the other ones. The lawyer for the voters ran into a rough patch at the Supreme Court, where justices from across the ideological spectrum tossed difficult questions his way.

“What about the idea that we should think about democracy?” asked Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was appointed by Trump. The position you hold has the effect of making voters change their minds.

“I think the question that you have to confront is why a single state should decide who gets to be president of the United States,” said Kagan, an Obama appointee.

The chief justice predicted a world in which some states would try to boot the Democratic nominee from the ballot and other states would use Section 3 to do the same.

“It will come down to just a handful of states that are going to decide the presidential election,” Roberts said. That’s a pretty big deal.

The 14th Amendment, Mitchell’s argument, and the role of Section 3 as a constitutional protection for the exclusion of candidates from the ballot

Jonathan Mitchell, a lawyer for Trump, made a series of arguments to keep the former president on the ballot. Trump isn’t covered by that part of the Constitution because he took a different oath, and congress would need to answer questions about disqualification before any candidate could be removed from the ballot.

The provisions in the 14th Amendment that were drafted in the 1860s were clear that they would protect the constitution for all time going forward, and that is what those who drafted Section 3 understood.