The Colorado Supreme Court disqualified Trump from running for office: what does this mean?

Colorado’s highest court has ruled former President Trump ineligible to run for the White House under the Insurrection Clause of the US Constitution.

In a landmark decision, judges ruled to disqualify Donald Trump from the state’s presidential primary, finding that the former president participated in the January 6, 2021, insurrection. The ruling will likely lead to a showdown in the nation’s highest court to decide whether the January 6 attack on the Capitol was an insurrection and whether Trump’s participation disqualifies him from running for the presidency, The Guardian writes.

The Colorado Supreme Court’s decision marks the first time a U.S. presidential candidate has been found unfit for office under a rarely used provision barring insurrectionists from holding office.

“A majority of the Court finds that Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,” said the court, all of whose judges were appointed by Democratic governors.

Trump has vowed to appeal to the US Supreme Court, his campaign said. “We have every confidence that the U.S. Supreme Court will quickly rule in our favor and finally put an end to these un-American lawsuits,” said Stephen Chang, a Trump campaign spokesman.

The ruling applies only to the state’s Republican primary on March 5, but its completion will likely also affect Trump’s standing in the November 5 general election. Nonpartisan US election forecasters consider Colorado a safe Democratic state, meaning Joe Biden is likely to take the state regardless of Trump’s fate.

The decision is a victory for civil rights groups and anti-Trump voters who have filed several similar lawsuits against the former president’s candidacy under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which was passed after the U.S. Civil War to prevent former Confederates from returning to power.

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

The court suspended the entry into force of its decision until January 4 to allow an appeal. If the case goes to the U.S. Supreme Court, the stay will remain in effect until the case is resolved.

The case was brought by a group of Colorado voters with assistance from the Washington-based group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW). Lawyers hoped to use the case to galvanize broader disqualification efforts and perhaps take the issue to the U.S. Supreme Court, which owns the latest word on constitutional issues.

Trump “violated his oath to the Constitution by engaging in insurrection against it, and thereby disqualified himself from holding public office,” argued Sean Grimsley, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs. “We hope and believe that other states will now follow suit,” he said.

Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee (RNC), called the decision “election interference” in a social media post. She continued that the RNC’s legal team “looks forward to helping fight for victory.”

Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican presidential candidate, called the court’s actions “a virtual attack on democracy.”

Ramaswamy has vowed to withdraw from the Colorado GOP primary and called on fellow candidates Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie and Nikki Haley to do the same if Trump is not allowed to run.

“The framers of the 14th Amendment would be shocked to see this narrow provision weaponized … to prevent a former president from seeking re-election,” Ramaswamy said.

Similar lawsuits in Minnesota and New Hampshire were dismissed on procedural grounds. In Michigan, plaintiffs challenging a similar case appealed to the state Supreme Court after lower courts refused to disqualify Trump.