Landmark Case: Supreme Court to Decide Trump's Eligibility on Colorado Ballot

 The Supreme Court announced Friday it will determine whether former President Donald Trump is eligible to be on the primary ballot for the 2024 presidential election in Colorado, setting up a landmark ruling that could determine Trump’s eligibility nationwide as multiple states face lawsuits over Trump’s eligibility under the 14th Amendment.

 The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case on Feb. 8 and will likely decide its ruling quickly as primary season nears; Colorado’s primary is scheduled for Super Tuesday, March 5, 2024, along with a slew of other states.

The Colorado Supreme Court ruled in December to disqualify Trump from the 2024 primary ballot under section three of the 14th Amendment—which prohibits people from holding public office who have taken an oath of office and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the [U.S.]

, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof”—based on his role in inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.
Trump and other parties in the case asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the issue and rule on it swiftly, with Trump arguing the Colorado court’s ruling should be overturned because the “question of eligibility to serve as President of the United States is properly reserved for Congress, not the state courts, to consider and decide.”

The Colorado lawsuit is one of a number of cases being brought across the country challenging Trump’s candidacy under the 14th Amendment—and Maine has also kicked him off the ballot—but this is the first time the dispute has made it to the high court.

While the Supreme Court weighs the case, Trump will stay on the Colorado ballot unless the Supreme Court rules he cannot be included prior to the ballots being finalized.



A number of other 14th Amendment cases are still in court across the country, and the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Colorado case will impact how those cases play out. Trump has appealed Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows’ ruling disqualifying him from the ballot to state court, which could also be appealed up to the U.S. Supreme Court as the case progresses. Though challenges in some states like Michigan and Minnesota have already failed, cases are still pending or being appealed in more than a dozen states, according to a tracker compiled by Lawfare.

46%. That’s the share of U.S. adults who believe Trump’s role in Jan. 6 should disqualify him from the presidency, according to a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll released in January, while 17% said it “casts doubt on his fitness to serve” but doesn’t disqualify him, and 33% said it didn’t affect his fitness for office.


The Colorado Supreme Court ruling cited an opinion from Justice Neil Gorsuch before he took the bench at the U.S. Supreme Court to help justify its decision. “As then-Judge Gorsuch recognized in [a previous case], it is ‘a state’s legitimate interest in protecting the integrity and practical functioning of the political process’ that ‘permits it to exclude from the ballot candidates who are constitutionally prohibited from assuming office,’” the Colorado court’s majority wrote in its ruling, referencing Gorsuch ruling, when he served as a federal appeals court judge, against a naturalized U.S. citizen who wanted to run for president.

Trump’s candidacy under the 14th Amendment has become a major question in recent months as the 2024 election has neared, with legal scholars on both sides of the aisle arguing the amendment can be used to kick the ex-president off the ballot. The debate has long been expected to go to the Supreme Court to decide as challenges against Trump’s candidacy have popped up across the country, and the Colorado ruling marked the first time a state had ruled against him in court on the issue. The spate of cases against Trump comes after left-leaning organizations previously tried to challenge candidates in the 2022 midterms, seeking to disqualify Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and former Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.). The effort to kick Greene off the ballot failed and Cawthorn’s case was mooted when he lost his primary election, but challengers did succeed in removing Couy Griffin from his position as a local commissioner in New Mexico. That ruling, which also barred Griffin from holding office again given his role in Jan. 6, marked the first time the 14th Amendment had been used to remove someone since 1869.