Supreme Court agrees to hear Trump appeal over Colorado ballot dispute
The Supreme Court announced Friday that it will decide whether former President Donald Trump is eligible to appear on the primary ballot in Colorado, rapidly jumping into what has emerged as the most pivotal legal battle heading into this year's presidential election.
The court's decision to grant the case came just days after Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, appealed a decision from Colorado's top court, which ruled that Trump was ineligible for another term because of his role in ginning up a mob on Jan. 6, 2021, that rioted at the U.S. Capitol.
The Supreme Court scheduled arguments for Feb. 8, an unusually quick turnaround that will allow the justices to decide the matter before most states hold their primaries.
The stakes are significant: Not since the Supreme Court decided Bush v. Gore in 2000, effectively handing the presidency to George W. Bush, has the court wielded such potential power over presidential politics. Whatever the high court decides in Colorado is likely to have repercussions in other states.
“Coloradans, and the American people, deserve clarity on whether someone who engaged in insurrection may run for the country's highest office," Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said late Friday.
The idea that Trump disqualified himself from a second term gained traction over the summer with a law review article by two conservative legal scholars. The theory is grounded in a Reconstruction-era provision of the 14th Amendment that bars people from serving as president if they took an oath as "an officer of the United States" and then "engaged in insurrection or rebellion."
Dozens of lawsuits cropped up relying on the theory to challenge Trump's eligibility for another term. Some state courts and officials looked at the idea and passed, including California, Minnesota and Michigan. But Colorado's Supreme Court and the secretary of state in Maine concluded Trump's actions barred him from their ballots.
Many experts have speculated that a majority of justices are likely looking for an "off ramp," a way to decide the case on narrow grounds that keeps Trump on the ballot but does not delve into fundamental questions about Trump's role on Jan. 6.
Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, said he was "confident that the fair-minded Supreme Court will unanimously affirm the civil rights of President Trump, and the voting rights of all Americans in a ruling that will squash all of the remaining ballot challenge hoaxes once and for all.''