Ruling that states cannot disqualify former President Donald Trump from the upcoming presidential ballot, the Supreme Court of the United States passed down an unsigned opinion from a majority of the justices yesterday. The case, which started last year in a state court in Colorado, tried to disqualify Trump from holding office for his alleged role in the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol.
All nine justices ruled that Colorado cannot remove Trump from the ballot and enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which was put in place to “help ensure an enduring Union by preventing former Confederates from returning to power in the aftermath of the Civil War.”
“But 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 Supreme Court said.
The 13-page opinion reversed Colorado’s Supreme Court ruling that Trump was ineligible to appear on the ballot under Section 3.
The justices said that allowing states to enforce Section 3 for federal candidates could create a “patchwork” in which “a single candidate would be declared ineligible in some States, but not others, based on the same conduct (and perhaps even the same factual record).” And went onto say that this could “dramatically change the behavior of voters, parties, and States across the country, in different ways and at different times.”
“Nothing in the Constitution requires that we endure such chaos,” the Supreme Court said.
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