Former President Donald Trump was cleared by U.S. Supreme Court to contest for the November election after it ruled that he cannot be excluded from Colorado’s primary election ballot over his actions surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“BIG WIN FOR AMERICA!!!” Trump posted on Truth Social, his social media platform, shortly after the ruling was handed down.
Speaking to reporters at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Trump said he hoped the ruling would “unify” the country in allowing him to continue his bid for the White House.
“I think it will go a long way to bringing our country together, which our country needs,” he said.
The former president had appealed the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to disqualify him under the 14th Amendment’s Section 3, the so-called insurrection clause of the U.S. Constitution.
The unanimous decision came just one day before Colorado voters head to the polls on Super Tuesday.
“Because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the States, responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates, we reverse,” the justices wrote.
It’s the first time the Supreme Court has weighed in on the insurrection clause, as the post-Civil War era provision was enacted in 1868 to prevent former Confederates from becoming a member of Congress or being elected to other offices.
It’s also the biggest case related to the presidential election that the high court has weighed in on since the 2000 election in Bush v. Gore.
While the court’s three liberal justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson concurred with the judgment, they disagreed with the conservative majority’s rationale, saying it was unnecessary and went too far:
“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,” Kagan, Sotomayor and Jackson wrote. “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.”
“I am disappointed in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision stripping states of the authority to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment for federal candidates,” Jena Griswold wrote on X. “Colorado should be able to bar oath-breaking [insurrectionists] from our ballot.” AP
