The Supreme Court of the United States ruled Monday morning that the Colorado Supreme Court erred in its decision to boot former President Donald Trump from the Centennial State’s primary ballot based on the state body’s finding that Trump violated a portion of Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution dealing with insurrection.
The unanimous 9-0 opinion from the Supreme Court made it clear that “responsibility for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates rests with Congress and not the States,” and therefore the “judgment of the Colorado Supreme Court therefore cannot stand.”
In a post on Truth Social, former President Trump celebrated the unanimous decision as a “big win for America!!”
Trump’s counsel of record in the matter said that Monday’s “unanimous Supreme Court decision underscores the bedrock principles of our democracy and the rule of law,” in a statement from Harmeet K. Dhillon, founder and managing partner of the Dhillon Law Group. “This victory is not just for President Trump but for the integrity of our electoral system and the rights of voters across the country,” Dhillon added. “The attempt to use the 14th Amendment in this manner was a dangerous overreach that, if left unchallenged, could have set a perilous precedent for future elections.”
As summarized by SCOTUS in Monday’s opinion:
A group of Colorado voters contends that Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits former President Donald J. Trump, who seeks the Presidential nomination of the Republican Party in this year’s election, from becoming President again. The Colorado Supreme Court agreed with that contention. It ordered the Colorado secretary of state to exclude the former President from the Republican primary ballot in the State and to disregard any write-in votes that Colorado voters might cast for him.
Former President Trump challenges that decision on several grounds. Because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the States, responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates, we reverse.
The high court did find that, in a more limited situation, “[s]tates may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office,” but “[s]tates have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency.”
That’s because the states’ “power over governance, however, does not extend to federal officeholders and candidates. Because federal officers ‘owe their existence and functions to the united voice of the whole, not of a portion, of the people,’ powers over their election and qualifications must be specifically ‘delegated to, rather than reserved by, the States’ … But nothing in the Constitution delegates to the States any power to enforce Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates.”
The Supreme Court’s decision is more bad news for anti-Trump leaders in a handful of states that have sought to prevent Trump’s supporters from even having the option of voting for him. Such markedly anti-democratic actions of the leftists who often lament the end of democracy were, rightfully, struck down by the Supreme Court this week.
As a result of the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling, Colorado’s Secretary of State acknowledged the ruling that found “states do not have the authority to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment for federal candidates” and in a statement said, “[i]n accordance with this decision, Donald Trump is an eligible candidate on Colorado’s 2024 Presidential Primary.”
Leaders not just in Colorado but also in Maine and Illinois had run afoul of the Constitution in their attempts — betraying a lack of confidence in Democrats’ ability to beat Trump — to sideline the opposition by any means necessary. Monday’s ruling means no state can boot Trump from the ballot as Colorado tried to do.
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said Monday’s “ruling confirms what Republicans have been arguing: the American people get to pick their candidates, not activists or bureaucrats. The effort to kick Donald Trump off of the ballot was pure election interference from the left, and the RNC was proud to fight in the Supreme Court alongside President Trump’s campaign and other Republican partners to preserve voters’ right to make their voices heard,” McDaniel added. “We look forward to continuing to fight and beat Democrats in court over the coming months.”
The full decision — including multiple concurring opinions — can be viewed below:
