Once again the US supreme court is being asked to weigh in on the country’s presidential election. In 2000, in Bush v Gore, the conservative-dominated court ended a Florida vote recount and handed a dubious victory to George W Bush. Now, with a 6-to-3 conservative majority – with three justices appointed by then president Donald Trump – the court will be asked to rule whether the latter’s name should be on the ballot paper for the 2024 election.
Colorado’s supreme court ruled that Trump is disqualified from holding office again because he engaged in insurrection with his actions leading up to the January 6th storming of the Capitol. It ruled that his name should be removed from the state Republican primary ballots in a decision which, if repeated in cases pending elsewhere, could prevent him from running. Similar lawsuits in Minnesota and New Hampshire have been dismissed on procedural grounds, while in Michigan another is going to appeal.
Ruling on a previously never-tested section 3 of the 14th amendment to the constitution, introduced after the civil war to prevent the candidacies of Confederate leaders, the Colorado court found Trump was indeed an “officer” of the US debarred from office by the constitution, and did take part in an insurrection. Specifically, it found that he set out to overturn the 2020 presidential election result; tried to alter vote counts; encouraged bogus slates of competing electors; pressured the vice president to violate the constitution; and called for the march on the Capitol.
There’s plenty of meaty ambiguity on the “officer” and “insurrection” definitions, however, for the supreme court appeal, which Trump’s team says it will pursue. If it does, it will join a pile of other Trump-related matters the court is likely to decide, including whether he is immune from criminal prosecution for actions he took in office and the scope of an obstruction charge central to his federal January 6th case.
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Unsurprisingly, Trump views the Colorado decision as another politically motivated blow, a badge of honour and grist to the mill