{"id":29868,"date":"2024-01-05T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-05T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/supreme-court-agrees-to-consider-trumps-appeal-to-colorado-ballot-ruling\/"},"modified":"2024-01-05T23:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-01-05T23:00:00","slug":"supreme-court-agrees-to-consider-trumps-appeal-to-colorado-ballot-ruling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/supreme-court-agrees-to-consider-trumps-appeal-to-colorado-ballot-ruling\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court agrees to consider Trump\u2019s appeal to Colorado ballot ruling"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"FILE
FILE -Former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally, Saturday, Dec. 16, 2023, in Durham, N.H. Five Republican and Democratic voters in Massachusetts have become the latest to challenge Trump's eligibility to appear on the Republican primary election ballot, claiming he is ineligible to hold office because he encouraged and did little to stop the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The challenge was filed late Thursday, Jan. 4, 2024 to Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin's office ahead of the March 5 presidential primary. (AP Photo\/Reba Saldanha, File)<\/span>Reba Saldanha<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The court announced Friday afternoon it will hear an appeal from the Trump campaign to the ruling that disqualified him from Colorado\u2019s Republican primary ballot. Oral arguments are scheduled for Feb. 8.<\/p>\n

In December 2023, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that Trump committed insurrection around the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and is barred from holding elected office by Section three of the 14th Amendment, known as the Disqualification Clause or Insurrection Clause.<\/p>\n

Shortly after Colorado\u2019s ruling, the high court in Michigan denied a similar effort. Since then, Maine\u2019s top election official also disqualified Trump from that state\u2019s primary ballot, while her counterpart in California declined to do so.<\/p>\n

Both Trump and the Colorado GOP appealed the state court ruling on numerous points. Among their arguments:<\/p>\n

The attack on the Capitol was a political protest that turned violent and doesn\u2019t qualify as an insurrection under the 14th Amendment, which was passed in the wake of the Civil War.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s words before and on Jan. 6 were constitutionally protected free speech and cannot be considered as inciting insurrection.<\/p>\n

Only Congress should have the power to disqualify federal candidates under the 14th Amendment because leaving the question up to state courts or election officials will result in an unacceptable patchwork of decisions.<\/p>\n

The Disqualification Clause does not apply to the presidency because that office is not on the list of positions the clause specifically mentions.<\/p>\n

And the Disqualification Clause only bars people from holding office, not running for election, so it is improper to use it to remove Trump from the state\u2019s ballot.<\/p>\n

The group of Republican and unaffiliated voters bringing the case contend that the Disqualification Clause logically applies to the presidency because it would be irrational that lawmakers intended it to cover so many levels of government, but not the highest office in the country. They also argue that Trump can be barred from holding office even if he isn\u2019t convicted of a specific crime in court, a line of reasoning Colorado\u2019s supreme court found persuasive.<\/p>\n

Colorado was a good state to challenge Trump\u2019s eligibility to be on a statewide ballot because of a 2017 law that opened primaries up to unaffiliated voters.<\/p>\n

That law also included a requirement that the state has a role in assuring candidates on ballots are \u201cqualified,\u201d according to Eric Olson, the former solicitor general who is now representing the Republicans and unaffiliated plaintiffs.<\/p>\n

Under federal law, the only people who can challenge a candidacy is an opponent of a candidate, Olson said, and so this battle had to be taken up within states.<\/p>\n

This case marks the first time the U.S. Supreme Court will weigh in on how to apply this section of the Constitution. Before 2021, the clause had only been invoked a handful of times since its ratification.<\/p>\n

The one thing that all sides agree on is that they want the Supreme Court to act swiftly.<\/p>\n

\u201cI urge the Court to consider this case as quickly as possible,\u201d said Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat. \u201cColoradans \u2013 and the American people \u2013 deserve clarity on whether someone who engaged in insurrection may run for the country\u2019s highest office.\u201d<\/p>\n

Griswold certified Colorado\u2019s primary ballots on Friday. The GOP ballot does include Trump\u2019s name, because the case is still in progress, but votes for him will only be counted if the Supreme Court strikes down Colorado\u2019s ruling.<\/p>\n

For his part, Olson, a former U.S. Supreme Court clerk, has asked that the arguments be held on Jan. 19, with a decision by Feb. 11 so that Coloradans can have some certainty before they get their ballots.<\/p>\n

CPR\u2019s Allison Sherry contributed to this story<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

-Former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally, Saturday, Dec. 16, 2023, in Durham, N.H. Five Republican and Democratic voters in Massachusetts have become the latest to challenge Trump’s eligibility to appear on the Republican primary election ballot, claiming he is ineligible to hold office because he encouraged and did little to stop […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29869,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[120,1137,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-29868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29868"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=29868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}