Donald Trump is the outstanding issue of the year on the US Supreme Court. Although there are already several cases that directly or indirectly affect him, the former president's appeal will determine the electoral future of the United States. Trump has appealed to the nation's highest court his disqualification from voting in Colorado's primary, a decision made last month by the state Supreme Court. A similar example was also done in Maine and could be replicated by other states. There are more than 30 states where his participation is being challenged on the same grounds. The implication is simple: The nine judges who sit at the top of the US judicial system must decide whether Trump should be barred from the election because he took part in an insurrection, alluding to his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results to change the election that he lost to Joe Biden and that led to the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. In his appeal, Trump argues that it was not an insurrection. On Wednesday, the National Republican Senatorial Committee filed a brief with the Supreme Court in support of Trump's appeal, The New York Times reported.
It was taken for granted that Trump would file a lawsuit. The former president and current candidate had until January 4 to appeal to the Supreme Court, which has a conservative supermajority of six justices, three of whom were appointed by Trump himself during his presidency. The appeal joins another filed by the Colorado Republican Party. It also comes a day after another lawsuit by Trump in Maine challenging a decision by that state's top election official to declare him ineligible for another term. In both states, the primaries will take place on March 5, the so-called Super Tuesday, the day on which more than a third of the delegates who will nominate the Republican presidential candidate will be elected.
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled by a vote of four to three that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment should apply to Trump, rendering him ineligible to hold public office and therefore his name should not appear on the primary ballot until November 5th . 2024 presidential election.
This provision states: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of the President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, in the United States or in any State which has previously held office as a member of Congress or as an officer of the.” “He has taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, or as a member of a state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of a state, to support insurrection or rebellion against it, or to aid or comfort the enemies thereof.” It adds that this veto may be overridden by Congress by the consent of two-thirds of each chamber. It is an amendment passed in 1868, three years after the end of the Civil War, aimed at preventing Confederate rebels from occupying positions of power.
The 43-page appeal filed with the U.S. Supreme Court incorporates the arguments of one filed a day earlier with the Maine Supreme Court. These types of appeals to the Supreme Court are framed as questions, and in this case the question is addressed directly: “Did the Colorado Supreme Court err in ordering that President Trump be disqualified from the 2024 presidential primary?”
The lawyers argue before the Supreme Court that Trump did not take part in any insurrection. The public speeches he gave (including one on January 6, 2021, before the attack on the Capitol) are protected by freedom of speech, they say. Additionally, they believe it is up to Congress and the Electoral College to decide a candidate's electability.
“The question of eligibility for the office of President of the United States is properly reserved for Congress, not state courts, to consider and decide,” the former president’s lawyers argue. “By considering the question of President Trump’s eligibility and barring him from the vote, the Colorado Supreme Court usurped the authority of Congress,” they state.
The appeal also says the Colorado court mischaracterized President Trump's role in the events of January 6, 2021. “It was not an 'insurrection' and President Trump did not participate in an 'insurrection' in any way.”
Trump's lawyers believe the 14th Amendment prohibits certain people from holding certain offices, but not from running for or being elected to them. They also point out that this cannot apply to the former president, as this office is not expressly mentioned in the rule. They point out that it lists positions in descending order, from senator to civil or military, but never mentions the position held in the Oval Office. Explicitly citing the position of electors or delegates who vote for the president but failing to mention the president and attempting to include the presidency as another “civilian office” defies common sense, they argue.
Additionally, it applies to anyone who participated in an insurrection as an “officer of the United States,” a term that, according to their interpretation, does not apply to the president. They point out that the term appears in three other constitutional provisions, all of which exclude the president from the language. Interestingly, the former president's lawyers in the New York fraud case said he should go to federal court because Trump was an “officer of the United States,” and the prosecution successfully argued the opposite. Another argument from Trump's legal team is that he did not take an “oath to support the Constitution” when he took office; Rather, the president's oath is to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution.
Most of the courts that have ruled so far, including the state supreme courts in Michigan and Minnesota, have held that the 14th Amendment does not apply preemptively to bar Trump from running for office, and that this is a very tense case interpretation is. With these precedents and the Supreme Court's conservative supermajority, Trump has a good chance of winning the case.
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