Supreme Court Rules Unanimously That States Can’t Kick Trump Off Ballot
The Supreme Court has ruled that states cannot unilaterally implement the Constitution’s 14th Amendment anti-rebellion clause to bar individuals from appearing on state ballots. The decision benefits one person specifically this election cycle: Donald Trump.
In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court overturned a ruling by Colorado’s Supreme Court authorizing Trump’s removal from the state’s 2024 primary election ballot on grounds that the former president had committed acts of rebellion and insurrection in the aftermath of his 2020 election loss and through his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Trump challenged the decision in December and, according to the Supreme Court, “because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the States, responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates, we reverse.”
The 14th Amendment was passed in 1866 in the aftermath of the American Civil War. The amendment granted citizenship to all those “born or naturalized” in the United States — including freed slaves — and banned individuals who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding most elected offices. The so-called Insurrection Clause served to prevent many former leaders of the defeated Confederacy from serving in government after the war. The text of the amendment specifies a two-thirds vote of Congress can vacate the prohibition on a candidate or office holder.
While the decision to reverse Colorado’s ruling was unanimous, several of the justices differed in their reasoning. The conservative justices contended that it is up to Congress to pass “appropriate legislation” to enforce the insurrection clause on federal officeholders and candidates — not the states.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in their concurring opinion, however, that while allowing the Colorado decision to stand would “create a chaotic state-by-state patchwork, at odds with our Nation’s federalism principles,” the conservative majority went further in addressing “novel constitutional questions to insulate this Court and petitioner from future controversy.”
“The majority announces that a disqualification for insurrection can occur only when Congress enacts a particular kind of legislation pursuant to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. In doing so, the majority shuts the door on other potential means of federal enforcement. We cannot join an opinion that decides momentous and difficult issues unnecessarily, and we therefore concur only in the judgment,” they wrote.
Sotomayor, Kagan, and Brown Jackson point out in their partial concurrence that “all the Reconstruction Amendments (including the due process and equal protection guarantees and prohibition of slavery) ‘are self-executing,’ meaning that they do not depend on legislation … Similarly, other constitutional rules of disqualification, like the two-term limit on the Presidency, do not require implementing legislation.”
In a televised address from Mar-a-Lago, Trump lauded the decision, calling it “something that will be spoken about 100 years from now and 200 years from now, extremely important,” and falsely claiming that the court ruled “you cannot take someone out of a race because their opponent would like to have it that way.”
The decision is the first of two potentially monumental Supreme Court rulings as Trump tries to avoid accountability over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. In April, the court will hear oral arguments regarding the former president’s claims of virtually absolute immunity from prosecution over crimes committed while in office.
During his Monday address, Trump rambled at length about his views on presidential immunity. “If the president had a good job — I did, some people would say a great job. But if a president does a good job, a president should be free and clear and, frankly, celebrated for having done a good job. Not indicted four times, and not gone after on a civil basis,” he said.
Trump repeatedly attacked the prosecutors and judges involved in his various cases and accused President Joe Biden of orchestrating the indictment against him to interfere with the election.
D.C.’s federal appeals court rebuked the claim in a scathing ruling last month but, given that Trump himself appointed three of the conservative justices currently sitting on the bench, it’s clear he feels his odds of success are better before the highest court in the land.
“I hope that the justices — because they’ll be working on some other cases but one in particular,” he said Monday. “Presidents have to be given total immunity. They have to be allowed to do their job. If they are not allowed to do their job, it is not what the founders wanted but perhaps, even more importantly, it will be terrible for our country.”
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