opinion analysis
by amy howe
on 4 March 2024
12:09 pm
Although the court did not explicitly say so, it is likely that rulings in Maine and Illinois will also be overturned in light of Monday’s ruling. (Gage Skidmore via Flickr)
The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that states cannot disqualify former President Donald Trump from voting for his role in the attacks on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. In an unsigned opinion, the majority of the justices held that only Congress – and not the states – can invoke Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which was enacted in the wake of the Civil War to disqualify from holding office persons who Had served earlier. the federal or state government before the war but then supported the Union against candidates for federal offices.
All nine justices agreed that Colorado could not remove Trump from the ballot. But four justices – Justice Amy Coney Barrett in a separate opinion and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson in a joint opinion – argued that their colleagues should have stopped there and not decided anything else.
The court’s decision comes just a day before Super Tuesday, when 16 states and one territory will hold primary elections. Trump currently has a huge lead in the race for the Republican nomination.
The dispute leading to Monday’s opinion began last year in a Colorado state court. A group of voters in that state argued that Trump was ineligible to appear on the ballot under Section 3, which provides (as is relevant here) that no “shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or President and shall not be an elector of the Vice-President, or hold any civil or military office under the United States, or any State,” if that person has previously ratified the Constitution “as a member of Congress, or of the United States Have been sworn in as an officer of the U.S., but have then “engaged in rebellion or insurrection against the federal government.”
A state trial court concluded that Trump had “engaged in insurrection”, but it rejected voters’ request to remove him from the ballot. The Court ruled that the presidency is not an “office…under the United States”, and the President is not an “officer of the United States”.
Voters appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court, which agreed that Trump was ineligible to appear on the ballot under Section 3. But that court put its decision on hold to give Trump time to appeal to the Supreme Court, which earlier this year had agreed to consider the issue.
In a 13-page unsigned opinion released shortly after 10 a.m., the justices overturned the state Supreme Court’s decision. The judges explained that the purpose of the 14th Amendment was to expand the power of the federal government at the expense of the states. And specifically, he noted, Section 3 was designed “to help ensure a permanent Union by preventing former Confederates from returning to power after the Civil War.”
But before disqualifying someone under Section 3, the judges said, there must be a determination that the provision actually applies to that person. And Section 5 of the 14th Amendment gives Congress the power to make this determination, by authorizing it to pass “appropriate laws” to “carry into effect” the 14th Amendment. The Court stressed that nothing in the 14th Amendment gave states the power to invoke Section 3 against candidates for federal office, nor was there any history of states doing so in the years after the amendment was ratified.
Furthermore, the court said, allowing states to invoke Section 3 against candidates for federal office could create a variety of problems. First, although Section 5 requires Congress to craft any law implementing Section 3 so that it specifically targets the conduct that Section 3 was adopted to prevent, Section 3 State efforts to implement this will not face the same limitation. The court concluded, “But the notion that the Constitution gives the States more independent authority than Congress to decide how Section 3 should be applied with respect to federal offices is simply impossible.”
Allowing states to apply Section 3 to federal candidates could create a scenario in which “on the basis of similar conduct (and perhaps similar factual records), the same candidate would be disqualified in some states but not others.” Not to.” Gave warning. And it could create a “patchwork” that could “dramatically change the behavior of voters, parties, and states across the country in different ways and at different times.” “There is nothing in the Constitution,” the court wrote, “that requires that we tolerate such lawlessness.”
The court did not reach some other issues that Trump had urged them to decide on the merits – such as whether Trump “engaged in insurrection” on January 6.
Barrett wrote a one-page opinion concurring in part and concurring in the verdict. In his view, the Court’s opinion that states cannot invoke Section 3 against presidential candidates was “sufficient to settle this case.” He suggested that the court should not “focus on the complex question whether federal law is the sole means by which Section 3 can be enforced.”
And in a relatively rare move, she appeared to criticize the tone of the joint opinion filed by Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson, saying “this is not the time to harshly escalate a dissent.” The issue has dealt with a politically charged issue. Especially in this situation, the write-up on the Court should take the national temperature down, not up.”
In their six-page joint opinion, Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson agreed with the result that the per curiam opinion reached – that Colorado cannot disqualify Trump – but not with its reasoning. Three judges acknowledged that allowing Colorado to remove Trump from the ballot would “create state-by-state chaos.”
But the majority, in their view, should not decide who can enforce Section 3 and how. He argued that nothing in Section 3 indicates that it must be enforced through legislation enacted by Congress in accordance with Section 5. And by addressing “many unresolved questions about Section 3,” the three justices complained, “the majority goes beyond the requirements of this case to limit how Section 3 can prevent an oath-breaking insurrectionist from becoming president. “
On December 28, Maine’s Secretary of State, Shenna Bellows, ruled that Trump was ineligible to appear on the ballot there. But a state court judge blocked that ruling in light of the Supreme Court’s decision to hear Trump’s appeal in the Colorado case. A judge in Illinois issued a similar ruling last week, but that case is also on hold awaiting the outcome of Supreme Court proceedings. Although the court did not explicitly say so, those decisions will likely be overturned in light of Monday’s decision.
Monday’s decision comes less than a week after judges agreed to take up another case involving the former president. On Wednesday, the justices announced they would hear arguments in late April on whether Trump can be prosecuted on charges that he conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The decision is expected in late June or early July.
This article was originally published in Howe on the Court.
