The Colorado Supreme Court has declared former President Donald Trump ineligible for the presidency early this Wednesday (Spanish time) by appealing to the insurrection clause of the United States Constitution. In this way, he has ordered his elimination from the candidacy for the state’s presidential primaries.
The ruling opens a fight with the federal Supreme Court to decide whether the main candidate for the Republican nomination can remain in the race. The decision, issued by a court whose justices were all appointed by Democratic governors, marks the first time in history that the third article of the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate.
Colorado’s top court overturned a ruling by a district court judge that found Trump incited the insurrection for his role in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, but said he could not be prevented from appearing in the ballot because it was not clear that the provision was intended to cover the presidency.
The court stayed its decision until Jan. 4 or until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the case. “We do not come to these conclusions lightly,” the majority of the room wrote. “We are aware of the magnitude and weight of the issues now before us. We are also aware of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being influenced by public reaction to the decisions that the law gives us. forced to take.”
Trump’s lawyers have promised to appeal any disqualification immediately to the country’s highest court, which has the final say on constitutional issues. His campaign said he was working on a response to the decision.
Trump lost Colorado by a 13% margin in 2020 and does not need the state to win next year’s presidential election. However, the danger for the former president lies in more courts and election officials following Colorado’s example and excluding him from states crucial to winning.
Colorado officials maintain the issue must be resolved by Jan. 5, the deadline to print the state’s presidential primary ballots. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed nationwide to disqualify Trump under Section 3, which was designed to prevent former Confederates from returning to the government after the Civil War.
This provision prohibits anyone from holding office who swore to “support” the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against it, and has only been used rarely since the decade after the Civil War.
The Colorado case is the first in which the plaintiffs were successful. After a week-long hearing in November, District Judge Sarah B. Wallace found that Trump had indeed “engaged in insurrection” by inciting the attack on the Capitol on January 6, and her ruling keeping him on the ballot was quite technical.
Trump’s lawyers convinced Wallace that since the language in Section 3 refers to “officials of the United States” who swear to “support” the Constitution, it should not apply to the president, who is not listed as an “official of the United States.” United States” nowhere else in the document and whose oath is to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution.
The provision also says that the offices covered include senators, representatives, electors of the president and vice president, and all others “under the United States,” but it does not mention the presidency.
The state Superior Court disagreed, siding with attorneys for six Republican and unaffiliated Colorado voters who argued that it was illogical to imagine that the amendment’s drafters, fearful of former Confederates returning to power, would exclude them from charges of low level but not the highest in the country.
“They would be saying that a rebel who took up arms against the government couldn’t be sheriff of the county, but he could be president,” attorney Jason Murray said in court arguments in early December.
