US Supreme Court Keeps Trump On Ballot Ahead Of Colorado Primary Election

The US Supreme Court keeps Trump on the ballot ahead of the Colorado Primary election. On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of Donald Trump, allowing the former president to remain on the election ballot and overturning a Colorado ruling that barred him from running for office due to his actions surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the United States Capitol.

The justices ruled that the Constitution does not allow a single state to disqualify a presidential candidate from national office and that such responsibility “rests with Congress rather than the states.”

The decision keeps Trump as the leading candidate for the Republican nomination and prevents the Supreme Court from directly determining the outcome of the 2024 presidential election. The justices expedited the challenge from voters in Colorado, issuing their decision one day before Super Tuesday, when that state and more than a dozen others hold primary contests. The decision applies to other states facing similar challenges to Trump’s candidature.

In a sign of the high court’s awareness of the election calendar, the justices took the unusual step of announcing the opinion on the Supreme Court’s website on a day when the court was not in session, rather than issuing it later this month.

The justices were reviewing a decision by Colorado’s highest court that declared Trump ineligible for re-election based on a long-dormant post-Civil War provision of the 14th Amendment. The unprecedented case thrust the Supreme Court into a pivotal role it had not played since 2000, when the court’s decision in Bush v. Gore handed George W. Bush the presidency and bitterly divided the country.

Trump’s eligibility to return to office is not the only issue before the justices that could affect his electability. The former president is facing four criminal indictments, two of which are related to his efforts to prevent President Biden’s 2020 election victory.

Next month, the Supreme Court will hear Trump’s challenge to a unanimous decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that stated that presidential immunity does not protect him from criminal prosecution.

Separately, the justices agreed to review the legality of a law used to charge hundreds of people in connection with the Jan. 6 riot, as well as a key component of Trump’s four-count federal election obstruction case in Washington.

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