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Washington DC – Former US President Donald Trump hailed it as a victory. His critics criticized it as a blow against accountability.
But experts say the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision decision Allowing Trump to remain on the Colorado primary ballot was always the most likely outcome. The surprise, they argue, is in the details.
On Monday, the Supreme Court shot down Colorado’s efforts to exclude Trump from the state’s Republican presidential primary under the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
That amendment contains the so-called “insurrection clause”: a section of the law that disqualifies candidates for public office if they “engage in an insurrection or rebellion” against the United States government.
The Colorado state Supreme Court ruled in December that Trump had violated the insurrection clause by inciting the riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. But in a unanimous ruling, the US Supreme Court The US considered that the state could not remove Trump from its primary vote.
Thomas Keck, a political science professor at Syracuse University, told Al Jazeera that the Colorado case had long faced an uphill battle.
“It was definitely always a long shot and the ruling is not surprising,” Keck explained. But, he added, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling opened broader questions about what barriers exist to protect American democracy.
“Three years have passed [since January 6], and Trump has faced almost no consequences. That is a bad sign for the health of the country’s democratic institutions,” Keck said.
The fact that not a single judge today issued a single ruling challenging the conclusion that Donald Trump participated in an insurrection is incredibly telling. Yes, they released him on a technicality, but there is no doubt that he is an oath-breaking insurrectionist.
– Noah Binder (@NoahBookbinder) March 4, 2024
A divided public reaction
Trump claimed to be justified after the ruling, presenting the case as part of a political and legal “witch hunt” aimed at harming his re-election chances.
His supporters were quick to seize on that narrative after Monday’s ruling.
In a social media post, Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz called the decision a defeat for “election interference through legal warfare.” Another Republican, Rep. William Timmons, hailed it as a “huge victory for America and a huge loss for Democrats trying to interfere in the election.”
Democrats, meanwhile, reacted with a mix of outrage and ambivalence, with some questioning the optics of removing Trump from the ballot.
Quentin Fulks, head of President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, responded with indifference to the Supreme Court’s decision. Biden is likely to face Trump again in this year’s general election, after defeating him in the 2020 presidential race.
“We don’t really care,” Fulks said during an interview on MSNBC on Monday.
“It was not the way we planned to beat Donald Trump,” he continued. “Our goal from day one of launching this campaign has been to defeat Donald Trump at the polls.”
“Quite shocking”
The Colorado case hinged on Trump’s actions after the 2020 election. After Trump’s loss to Biden, a group of his supporters stormed the US Capitol in a violent attempt to annul his defeat.
Last September, a group of six Colorado voters, with the support of the liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), filed a petition in state court to remove Trump from the ballot with the argument that he participated in the mutiny.
Trump has long faced accusations that he incited his supporters with false claims that the election had been stolen through large-scale fraud.
In Monday’s ruling, the Supreme Court’s nine justices (six conservatives and three leftists) unanimously agreed that states could only disqualify those who hold or seek state-level office. The US presidency, they said, was a different matter.
“States have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 [of the 14th Amendment] regarding federal offices, especially the Presidency,” they wrote.
From there, however, unanimity ended. In an unsigned majority opinion, five conservative justices argued that, at the federal level, only the United States Congress could disqualify an individual from running for office on the grounds of insurrection.
“The Constitution empowers Congress to prescribe how those determinations should be made,” they wrote. “The terms of the Amendment refer only to application by Congress.”
But critics warn that the decision – with its emphasis on congressional action – could limit the power of the judiciary to interpret the 14th Amendment.
Claire Finkelstein, director of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, called the majority’s argument “quite shocking.”
He explained that, by his logic, the Supreme Court may not be able to disqualify someone like Trump from appearing in a primary vote, even if he were convicted on federal insurrection charges.
The court would need “some piece of federal legislation that says a federal conviction for insurrection should count for purposes of the amendment,” he said.
On Monday, Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin told the news site Axios that he had begun crafting such a bill. But critics point out that such legislation faces many difficulties, given the broad support Trump enjoys in the country. Republican Partywhich controls the United States House of Representatives.
Discord on the bench
Other members of the Supreme Court also questioned the scope of the majority opinion, warning of a dangerous precedent.
The court’s three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, denounced the opinion as overreaching in a joint opinion. They argued that it essentially neutralized the court’s ability to weigh in on the matter in the future.
“This Court is authorized to ‘say what the law is,’” they wrote. “Today, the Court departs from that vital principle and decides not only this case but also challenges that could arise in the future.”
By placing the matter in the hands of Congress, the three justices argued that the majority had “closed the door on other potential means of federal law enforcement,” in order to “insulate” the court “from future controversies.”
“Today, the majority goes beyond the needs of this case to limit how Section 3 can prevent an oath-breaking insurrectionist from becoming president,” they wrote. “We protest the majority’s effort to use this case to
define the limits of the federal application of that provision.”
A fourth justice, Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, wrote her own opinion, separate from the majority. In her response she addressed the tense political climate.
“The Court has resolved a politically charged issue in the volatile season of a presidential election,” he wrote.
Still, she also cautioned that the court majority should not “amplify the disagreement stridently.”
“Particularly in these circumstances, the writings about the Court should lower the national temperature, not raise it,” he explained. The Colorado case, he argued, did not require the court to “address the complicated question
whether federal law is the exclusive vehicle through which Section 3 can be enforced.”
‘I could have defined this moment’
By returning Trump to the polls in Colorado, Monday’s ruling may have avoided a political third way, a controversy that could have inflamed further tensions. However, Syracuse University’s Keck warned that the Supreme Court’s decision sent a broader and disturbing message about potential impunity for political figures.
Keck said Trump’s legal troubles evoke a comparison with the prosecution of Brazil’s far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro, who similarly faces accusations of helping foment a coup after his 2022 election loss.
Bolsonaro, however, has since been banned hold public office until 2030.
“Compare this to a country like Brazil, which has taken swift action against political figures who have abused their power to try to stay in office despite losing an election,” Keck said.
Finkelstein also told Al Jazeera that Monday’s decision was a missed opportunity to make a “very clear statement of values for the country.” He noted that the justices avoided weighing in on whether Trump was responsible for the attack on the Capitol.
“I could have defined this moment on January 6, 2021 as an insurrection and Trump’s participation in it,” he said.
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