Democratic led states - Remove Trump off ballot

[GMDino]

To virtually no one's surprise the SC unanimously agreed states cannot remove candidates, only determine who is eligible.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-rules-trump-cannot-kicked-colorado-ballot-rcna132291

Quote:[color=var(--article-body--date-source--color)]March 4, 2024, 10:00 AM EST / Updated March 4, 2024, 10:24 AM EST[/color]
[color=var(--article-body--byline--color)]By Lawrence Hurley[/color]


WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday handed a sweeping win to former President Donald Trump by ruling states cannot kick him off the ballot over his actions leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — bringing a swift end to a case with huge implications for the 2024 election.


The court in an unsigned ruling with no dissents[color=var(--article-body-content-strong)] reversed the Colorado Supreme Court, which determined that Trump could not serve again as president under section 3 of the Constitution's 14th Amendment.

The court said the Colorado Supreme Court had wrongly assumed that states can determine whether a presidential candidate is ineligible under a provision of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.[/color]

The ruling makes it clear that Congress, not states, has to set rules on how the 14th Amendment provision can be enforced. As such the decision applies to all states, not just Colorado.

"Because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the states, responsible for enforcing section 3 against all federal officeholders and candidates, we reverse," the ruling said.

The decision comes just a day before the Colorado primary.

Minutes after the ruling, Trump hailed the decision in an all-capital-letters post on his social media site, writing, "Big win for America!!!"

Follow live updates on the Trump Supreme Court ruling[url=https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/live-blog/supreme-court-decision-trump-rcna141628][/url]

In addition to ensuring that Trump remains on the ballot in Colorado, the decision will end similar cases that have arisen.[color=var(--article-body-content-strong)] So far only two other states, Maine and Illinois, have followed Colorado's path. Like the Colorado ruling, both those decisions were put on hold.
In a statement, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold acknowledged the court ruling that states do not have the authority to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment for federal candidates. In accordance with this decision, Donald Trump is an eligible candidate on Colorado’s 2024 Presidential Primary.”[/color]

The ruling warned of the dangers of a patchwork of decisions around the country that could send elections into chaos if state officials had the freedom to determine who could appear on the ballot for president.

"The result could well be that a single candidate would be declared ineligible in some states, but not others, based on the same conduct," the ruling said.

Although the bottom-line vote was unanimous, there were some divisions on the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, as to how the case was resolved. The three liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — complained in a jointly written concurring opinion that the court had decided more than it needed to by laying out how section 3 could be enforced by Congress.

Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett agreed that the court went further than required, although she did not join the liberal justices' opinion.

The liberal justices said the decision could "insulate" Trump from "future controversy."

The ruling "shuts the door on other potential means of federal enforcement" of section 3, they added.

The bit of discussion I heard essentially is asking if this dissent is implying that congress could kick a candidate off if the 14th is not self executing.

Also the SC did not get into whether Jan 6th was an insurrection or what part P01135809 played in it.

He is back on all ballots.