Trump disqualified from 2024 ballot in Colorado: Can he still run for president?

Donald Trump’s legal troubles continue to mount. The latest hurdle in his bid to run for president in 2024 is the Colorado Supreme Court’s landmark ruling. Citing a constitutional insurrection clause, it disqualified the Republican from the ballot in the state next year.

The court ruled 4-3 that Trump is not an eligible candidate. The decision from the court marks the first time in history that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate.

We take a look at the Colorado court’s ruling and what this means for Trump’s presidential bid.

What is the Colorado Supreme Court’s verdict?

A divided Colorado Supreme Court declared Trump ineligible for the White House under the US Constitution’s insurrection clause and removed him from the state’s presidential primary ballot.

“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, whose justices were all appointed by Democratic governors, wrote in its 4-3 decision.

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

Why did the Colorado Supreme Court disqualify Trump?

The state’s highest court disqualified Trump under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, also known as the insurrection clause.

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Passed by the Senate on 8 June 1866, and ratified two years later, on July 9, 1868, the 14th Amendment 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.

Dozens of lawsuits have been filed nationally to disqualify Trump under Section 3. Legal experts believe that the law applies to Trump because of his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election by encouraging his supporters to storm the US Capitol.

“The dangers of Trump ever being allowed back into public office are exactly those foreseen by the framers of section 3… Which is that they knew that if an oath-taking insurrectionist were allowed back into power they would do the same if not worse,” Ron Fein, the legal director for Free Speech for People, told The Guardian in a recent interview.

“I think it [the ruling] may embolden other state courts or secretaries to act now that the bandage has been ripped off,” Derek Muller, a Notre Dame law professor who has closely followed the Section 3 cases, was quoted as saying by The Associated Press after Tuesday’s ruling. “This is a major threat to Trump’s candidacy.”

Also read: Explained: The charges looming over Donald Trump in US 2020 election probe

Can Trump run for president in 2024?

The ruling means it would be wrongful under election laws to list him as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot in Colorado. No votes cast in his name will be counted as well, the order states.

The order only applies to the 5 March primary elections to be held by the Republican Party. However, its results could impact the presidential elections scheduled for 5 November.

The law does not apply to other states.

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

What next for Donald Trump?

The Colorado court stayed its decision until 4 January or until the US Supreme Court ruled on the case. Colorado officials say the issue must be settled by 5 January, the deadline for the state to print its presidential primary ballots.

If Trump asks the US Supreme Court to step in by January 4 – the date set by the Colorado Supreme Court for parties to appeal before the ruling goes into effect – the decision will remain paused, according to Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas Law School. That means he will “almost certainly” remain on Colorado’s primary ballot on March 5, Vladeck told CNN.

Also read: What if Donald Trump becomes president of the US again?

Trump’s attorneys had promised to appeal any disqualification immediately to the nation’s highest court, which has the final say about constitutional matters.

Trump’s legal spokeswoman Alina Habba said in a statement Tuesday night, “This ruling, issued by the Colorado Supreme Court, attacks the very heart of this nation’s democracy. It will not stand, and we trust that the Supreme Court will reverse this unconstitutional order.”

The former US president’s campaign sent out a fundraising email citing what it called a “tyrannical ruling”. However, Trump did not talk about the decision during a rally on Tuesday evening in Iowa’s Waterloo.

What have Trump’s allies said?

Several Republican contenders and Trump’s allies have slammed the decision as “un-American” and part of a politically motivated effort to destroy his candidacy.

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has vowed to pull out from the Colorado ballot if the state’s Supreme Court did not let Trump contest. He also urged other Republican candidates to withdraw from the Colorado polls.

“I pledge to withdraw from the Colorado GOP primary ballot until Trump is also allowed to be on the ballot, and I demand that Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, and Nikki Haley do the same immediately,” the Indian-American leader said on X.

I pledge to withdraw from the Colorado GOP primary ballot until Trump is also allowed to be on the ballot, and I demand that Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, and Nikki Haley do the same immediately - or else they are tacitly endorsing this illegal maneuver which will have disastrous… pic.twitter.com/qbpNf9L3ln

— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) December 20, 2023

Florida governor Ron DeSantis called on the US SC to reverse the Colorado ruling. “The Left invokes ‘democracy’ to justify its use of power, even if it means abusing judicial power to remove a candidate from the ballot based on spurious legal grounds. SCOTUS should reverse,” he wrote on X.

Chris Christie would not comment directly on the ruling since he said he had not yet read it. But he said that he believes it would be “bad for the country” if Trump were kept off a ballot by a legal decision, adding there hasn’t yet been a criminal trial proving Trump has incited an insurrection, reports CNN.

According to Nikki Haley, the ballot decisions shouldn’t be left to the courts. “We don’t need to have judges making these decisions, we need voters to make these decisions. So, I want to see this in the hands of the voters,” she said.

“Four partisan Democrat operatives on the Colorado Supreme Court think they get to decide for all Coloradans and Americans the next presidential election,” House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik said in a statement.

Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, who campaigned for Trump in Iowa on Friday, said on X that the decision was exemplary of “what dictators do,” repeating a line used by the Trump campaign when fundraising off the court’s ruling.

With inputs from agencies