Activists Urge Supreme Court to Affirm Colorado Ruling to Take Trump Off Ballot

Former President Donald Trump speaks to the media at a Washington hotel, Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2024, after attending a hearing before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals at the federal courthouse in Washington. AP Photo/Susan Walsh

Legal counsel for six Colorado voters whose petition ended with a disqualification of former President Donald Trump as a candidate in the Colorado Supreme Court are now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to affirm that ruling.

“There is no basis to disrupt the state court’s interpretation of state law, which enforced rather than “circumvent[ed]” the Constitution,” they argued.

The local voters are represented by the activist group Citizens for Ethics & Responsibility in Washington (CREW), which has been fundraising for the upcoming arguments before the high court Feb. 8.

Last December, Colorado became the first state to find President Trump disqualified from running for office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. The once little-known Civil War-era statute has since gained national prominence, as several other states now grapple with dozens of challenges filed by voters to disqualify President Trump or President Joe Biden from the ballot as primary elections are underway.

In the two weeks after the Supreme Court agreed to hear President Trump’s petition challenging the Colorado Supreme Court ruling, some 40 amicus briefs were filed by third parties urging the court to settle the matter for all states.

The respondents sidestepped the issue of chaos arising in other states and argued their case in regard to Colorado election law. They also sought to reframe the question President Trump posed—whether the Colorado Supreme Court erred in its ruling—and presented five other questions.

The respondents asked whether President Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, amounted to “engag[ing] in insurrection” as stated in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, whether President Trump showed the facts found by the trial court were “erroneous,” whether Section 3 applies “to insurrectionist former Presidents,” whether states can exclude presidential candidates from primary ballots after finding they are ineligible under Section 3, and whether President Trump forfeited his Elector Clause challenge in the Colorado case.

‘Insurrection’

The respondents’ position is that there is no question that Jan. 6 constituted an insurrection and framed the questions and arguments in such a manner.

However, the outline of the insurrection argument is derived from the controversial January 6 Select Committee report, which President Trump’s attorneys sought to have excluded from evidence as a partisan report. The lower courts had faulted the intervenors for not refuting point-by-point the facts in the report they had issue with.

To date, few jurisdictions have heard arguments over whether Jan. 6 constituted an insurrection, including a Colorado district court, the Maine secretary of state, and most recently, the general counsel for the Illinois Board of Elections on Jan. 26.

These arguments were heard in the context of state election code challenges and range from a few hours to, in the case of Colorado, a five-day trial.

Several other state and federal judges have dismissed similar challenges, finding it imprudent to rule on the issue of insurrection via an administrative statute. More than a thousand defendants have been charged with crimes related to Jan. 6, and none of them were charged with “insurrection.”

The respondents argue that more than 140 law enforcement officers were injured and members of Congress had to “flee for their lives” on Jan. 6, and that President Trump “spearhead[ed] this attack” and therefore “engaged in insurrection against the Constitution.”

‘Holding Office’

Another key issue raised by parties is whether a potential Section 3 disqualification pertains to running for office or holding office.

Amici authors, including 179 congressional Republicans, have argued that Section 3 allows Congress to remove such a disability through a two-thirds vote all the way up to inauguration day, and that preemptively taking President Trump off the ballot infringes on the authority of Congress.

The respondents argued that there was no true conflict.

“Congress can grant it [amnesty] at any time. But in the meantime, Colorado has an election to run,” they argued. “If an oath-breaking insurrectionist receives amnesty too late to qualify in this election cycle, they can run in the next [cycle] or seek some other office.”

“To hold that Trump’s eligibility cannot be determined until after election day would be disastrous,” they added, arguing that if the matter is not resolved soon, “tens of millions of Americans” might end up voting for President Trump only to have the votes not count.

“[That] would be a recipe for mass disenfranchisement, constitutional crisis, and the very ’bedlam‘ Trump threatens,” the brief reads.

The dozens of lower court and administrative decisions arising from the ever-growing number of Section 3 challenges seem to have raised more legal questions than they have answered, and the Supreme Court appears to be cognizant of the snowballing issue.

In a recent note released accompanying the high court’s Feb. 8 schedule, it indicated it would announce a written opinion the very same day.