U.S. President Donald Trump looks on during his meeting with Colorado Governor Jared Polis and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum in the Cabinet Room of the White House on May 13, 2020 in Washington, DC.
Doug Mills Pool | Getty Images
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Thursday morning in former President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn a Colorado Supreme Court ruling barring him from that state’s 2024 Republican presidential primary.
The arguments, expected to last several hours, come as Trump has a commanding lead in the statewide Republican primary race and a long-term bid from former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley appears to be the only potential stumbling block for him the party’s nomination this summer.
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled in December that Trump should be barred from holding the office of president because he “participated in insurrection” by inciting the 2021 Capitol riot as part of his efforts to overturn his defeat by President Joe Biden to make amends in the 2020 election.
This bombshell 4-3 ruling was based on Section Three of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which states that “no person” may serve as an officer of the United States who has previously taken a federal oath and “participated in insurrection.” Rebellion” against the USA
Six Republican and unaffiliated voters in Colorado filed the lawsuit that led to the state Supreme Court’s ruling.
Trump’s lawyers argued in a brief filed last month with the U.S. Supreme Court that the Colorado court decision was “based on a dubious interpretation” of Section 3, while noting that similar efforts to disqualify Trump from presidential elections are underway in more than 30 states are in progress.
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The U.S. Supreme Court “should quickly and decisively put an end to these voting denial efforts that threaten to disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans and unleash chaos and mayhem if other state courts and state officials follow Colorado’s lead and foreclose the likely.” “We have removed the Republican presidential nominee from their ballot,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.
These lawyers said that Trump “is not even subject to Section Three” because a president is “not an ‘officer of the United States’ within the meaning of the Constitution.”
The lawyers also argue that even if Trump is subject to the provision, he has not engaged in conduct that would qualify as insurrection.
Sean Grimsley, one of the lawyers who represented the plaintiffs in the case that led to Trump’s disqualification, said during a call with reporters on Wednesday that Trump’s claim that he was not an officer of the United States as president became his main argument in the case became a case.
Grimsley predicted that the claim would be closely examined by Supreme Court justices during oral arguments.
“I think the justices will be very interested in this question, if only because the president or former President Trump has made this the main argument in this case,” Grimsley said.
He and another attorney for the plaintiffs rejected that argument.
They said it was obvious that a president was an official of the United States and that it would take “linguistic acrobatics” to argue otherwise.
Mario Nicolais, one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, acknowledged that lawyers on his side “have to win every argument” they make to disqualify Trump in order to win the case.
“We think we will do it,” said Nicolais.
“We believe that we are winning so many of these arguments on several different levels, and that is why we have every confidence that we will win this case,” he said.
The plaintiffs’ main arguments are that Trump committed an insurrection against the Constitution, that Section 3 applies to insurgent presidents, that state courts can rule on Section 3 under state ballot access laws, and that states bar presidential candidates from voting could be ineligible if they were deemed constitutional.
The plaintiffs also argue that Congress need not first declare a candidate ineligible under Section 3.
“Donald Trump is disqualified today,” Nicolais said. “He was disqualified on January 6, 2021 when he got involved. He disqualified himself under our Constitution.”
Three of the nine Supreme Court justices who will hear his appeal on Thursday were appointed by Trump – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Three other justices appointed by Republican presidents alongside Trump’s nominees form a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court.
Despite this deadlock, Trump has failed to get the Supreme Court on his side in a number of previous cases, including his efforts to challenge the voting processes and results during the 2020 presidential election.
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2024-02-08 10:00:01
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