The court on Tuesday was the first in the nation to find that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment — which disqualifies from office people who engage in insurrection against the Constitution after taking an oath to support it — applies to former President Trump.
The court stayed the decision until Jan. 4, or until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the case. Colorado officials say the issue has to be be settled by Jan. 5, the deadline for the state to print its presidential primary ballots.
Dozens of lawsuits have been filed nationally to disqualify Trump under Section 3, which was put in place to keep former Confederates from returning to government after the Civil War. It's been used only a handful of times since the decade after the Civil War.
All of Colorado’s Supreme Court justices were appointed by Democratic governors; the ruling was 4-3. The court overturned a ruling from a district court judge who found that Trump incited an insurrection for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, but said he couldn't be barred from the ballot because it was unclear that the provision was intended to cover the presidency.
The state Supreme Court didn’t agree, siding with attorneys for six Colorado Republican and unaffiliated voters who argued that it was nonsensical to imagine that the framers of the amendment, fearful of former Confederates returning to power, would bar them from low-level offices but not the highest office in the land.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said: “Unsurprisingly, the all-Democrat appointed Colorado Supreme Court has ruled against President Trump, supporting a Soros-funded, left-wing group’s scheme to interfere in an election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden by removing President Trump’s name from the ballot and eliminating the rights of Colorado voters to vote for the candidate of their choice. We have full confidence that the U.S. Supreme Court will quickly rule in our favor and finally put an end to these un-American lawsuits.”
Several legal experts say in interviews with The New York Times that the case involves novel legal and constitutional questions for which there's no clear precedent.
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