Top court rules Trump ineligible to run for presidency

COLORADO: The Colorado Supreme Court declared former US president Donald Trump ineligible for the presidency Tuesday under the US Constitution’s insurrection clause, and removed him from the state’s presidential primary ballot.

The move set up a likely showdown in the country’s highest court to decide whether the front-runner for the GOP nomination can remain in the race. Trump’s attorneys had promised to appeal any disqualification immediately to the US Supreme Court, which has the final say about constitutional matters.

The decision from a court whose justices were all appointed by Democratic governors marks the first time in history that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate.

“A majority of the court holds that Trump is disqualified from holding the office of president under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,” the court wrote in its 4-3 decision.

Dozens of lawsuits have been filed nationally to disqualify Trump under Section 3, which was designed to keep former Confederates from returning to government after the Civil War. It bars from office anyone who swore an oath to “support” the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against it, and has been used only a handful of times since the decade after the Civil War.

The Colorado case is the first where the plaintiffs succeeded.

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The court stayed its decision until Jan. 4, or until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the case.

“We do not reach these conclusions lightly,” wrote the court’s majority. “We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favour, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”

The decision from Colorado’s top court to ban Donald Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot will likely spur efforts to convince other states’ courts to do the same. But the US Supreme Court could rule that voters, and not judicial bodies, should make that decision, Chris Galdieri, a politics professor based in New Hampshire, told CBC’s Canada Tonight.

Colorado’s highest court overturned a ruling from a district court judge who found that Trump incited an insurrection for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, but said he could not be barred from the ballot because it was unclear that the provision was intended to cover the presidency.

Trump has called the lawsuits “election interference,” and his lawyers have contended that Trump never “engaged in insurrection” and was simply exercising his free speech rights on Jan. 6 to warn about election results he did not believe were legitimate.

Trump lost Colorado by 13 percentage points in 2020 and doesn’t need the state to win next year’s presidential election. But the danger for the former president is that more courts and election officials will follow Colorado’s lead and exclude Trump from must-win states.

Colorado officials say the issue must be settled by Jan. 5, the deadline for the state to print its presidential primary ballots.