The Supreme Court unanimously ruled Monday that states cannot strip former President Donald Trump from their ballots over claims he engaged in an insurrection, and it likely shut down further federal court challenges as well, effectively settling the debate over whether the Republican front-runner can be an option for voters this year.
The justices did not address whether Mr. Trump was part of an insurrection but ruled on who could enforce such a question.
The court ruled that Colorado’s high court erred when it deleted Mr. Trump’s name from the state’s Republican primary ballot.
A majority of the court went further, ruling that only Congress can enforce the Constitution’s insurrection language through laws. Given that no such law is on the books, other federal court challenges appear to be shut down as well.
“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 court said in its unsigned opinion.
The justices said that allowing states to make decisions about who can appear on a presidential ballot would result in “chaos” with no end to potential mischief.
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“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 justices said.
“Big win for America!!!” Mr. Trump said on social media.
Mr. Trump said the justices acted “brilliantly” and predicted their ruling would unify the country by settling his place on the ballot.
“They can go after me as a politician, they can go after me with votes. But they’re not going to go after me with that kind of lawsuit,” he told reporters in remarks at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.
The three Democratic appointees on the court, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, agreed that Colorado erred but said their colleagues went too far in ruling that only Congress can act.
“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.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, said her colleagues in the majority could have been more circumspect but chided the Democratic-appointed justices for their angry language.
“Particularly in this circumstance, writings on the Court should turn the national temperature down, not up,” Justice Barrett wrote. “For present purposes, our differences are far less important than our unanimity: All nine Justices agree on the outcome of this case. That is the message Americans should take home,” she wrote.
Liberal activists grumbled, but the unanimity of the ruling sapped much of the venom toward the court.
They turned their attention to other ways to stop Mr. Trump from reclaiming the White House.
“Because of the court’s opinion, it is now up to Congress to definitively prohibit those who have engaged in insurrection from holding federal office,” said Michael Sozan at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. “And if Congress fails to do so, voters across the ideological spectrum must chart the future of our republic and decide whether engaging in insurrection is disqualifying to be president.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, said he has begun working on legislation that would allow the Justice Department to keep candidates off the ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
“We are going to revise it in light of the Supreme Court’s decision,” Mr. Raskin told Axios.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment reads: “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.”
The case sped from a state trial court to Colorado’s high court to the U.S. Supreme Court in a matter of months.
The justices ordered Colorado to keep Mr. Trump’s name on the ballot for the Republican primary Tuesday while they considered the case. Early voting began last month, so voters cast ballots for Mr. Trump while the matter was officially in doubt.
Ballot access is one of several legal battles Mr. Trump is fighting.
The justices are also set to review an appeals court decision that rejected his attempts to claim immunity from prosecution based on his actions while president. Those claims stem from an indictment by special counsel Jack Smith accusing him of meddling in the 2020 election.
Mr. Smith has brought another indictment charging the president with mishandling secret documents and obstructing the investigation after classified materials were found at his home in Florida.
The former president also faces criminal charges in state courts in Georgia and New York.
Mr. Trump said he hopes the justices also side with him on the immunity question.
“A president shouldn’t have that on his mind and he has to have a free and clear mind when he makes very big decisions, or it’s going to be nothing more than a ceremonial post,” he said.
On the ballot question, most courts sided with Mr. Trump. Many ruled that his challengers didn’t have standing.
Other courts said Mr. Trump couldn’t be ousted from what amounts to internal party business but were open to a challenge on the general election ballot.
An Illinois judge tried to boot Mr. Trump from the state ballot while the justices reviewed the Colorado dispute. Before the oral arguments, Maine’s secretary of state tried to remove his name, but that decision was put on hold while the appeal was pending.
Even in Colorado, the trial court that first heard the case ruled that Mr. Trump’s name could appear on the ballot, but the state Supreme Court overturned that decision in a 4-3 ruling that the justices said broke legal ground.
They concluded that Mr. Trump engaged in an insurrection with his behavior surrounding the 2020 election, that he was covered by the relevant part of the Constitution, that his words were not protected by the First Amendment and that Colorado could act on its own to block him from the ballot.
During oral arguments, the U.S. Supreme Court justices suggested numerous reasons to reject Colorado’s ruling.
One said the language in the Constitution seemed to intentionally exclude the presidency from the list of covered offices, and another pointed out that an early court decision just after the amendment was ratified suggested states couldn’t act without legislation from Congress.
Congress had such a law on the books from 1870 to 1948, when it was struck from a broad rewrite.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. warned of a ballot arms race, with Republican and Democratic secretaries of state rushing to oust candidates of the other party.
Indeed, some Republicans suggested that the border chaos or President Biden’s dealings with Iran could constitute aid and comfort to an enemy worthy of being ousted from a ballot.
The Supreme Court ruling boiled down all those objections to a simpler principle: Only Congress can make these judgments.
“The Constitution empowers Congress to prescribe how those determinations should be made,” the court said.
Left-wing activists called for Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from the case over his wife’s support for Mr. Trump’s objections to the 2020 election results.
Justice Thomas rejected those demands and did take part in the ruling.
The case is Trump v. Anderson. Norma Anderson is one of the Colorado voters seeking to block the former president from the ballot.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.
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