The Supreme Court ruled that Colorado cannot remove former President Donald Trump from the presidential ballot. This ruling sets a precedent for other states that they also cannot do that. At least not based on Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The court ruled that states cannot enforce Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Only Congress can do that. “The notion that the Constitution grants the States freer rein than Congress to decide how Section 3 should be enforced with respect to federal offices is simply implausible,” the ruling says.
All nine justices agreed that Colorado cannot remove Trump from the ballot but the opinion was unsigned. There was some in-fighting of opinion however. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson agreed with the result but published a separate opinion stating that the court’s ruling was correct but their colleagues took it too far. Justice Barrett responded with a one-page opinion saying that the other three should not have weighed in further because “this is not the time to amplify disagreement with stridency. The Court has settled a politically charged issue in the volatile season of a Presidential election. Particularly in this circumstance, writings on the Court should turn the national temperature down, not up.”
Trump is expected to win Super Tuesday primary races handily today.
