In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court ruled that states, such as Colorado, cannot
unilaterally declare Trump ineligible to remain on the ballot for the upcoming 2024 Presidential
election. Courts in Colorado, Illinois, and Maine recently ruled that Trump could be left off the
ballot on the basis that he violated Section 3 of the 14th Amendment — a provision banning
people who have engaged in insurrection from holding public office. In light of the Supreme

In the Court’s 9-0 decision to overturn the rulings of those states’ courts, Trump declared victory, calling it a “Big win for America.”

The ruling, Trump v. Anderson, stated that states did not have the power to remove
federal candidates from ballots under Section 3, with the ability to enforce the clause instead
being reserved to Congress. While the nine justices had reached consensus regarding states’
ability to disqualify a Presidential candidate from the ballot, four justices concurred only in part,
believing the majority had not exercised sufficient judicial restraint. Justices Barrett, Sotomayor,
Kagan, and Jackson argued that the court did not need to establish that only Congress could
remove a federal official from a ballot, as that issue had not been presented before it — the three
latter justices quoted Justice Breyer’s dissent in Bush v. Gore in their opinion, writing that
“[w]hat it does today, the Court should have left undone.”

Noticeably, the Court did not address whether Trump was guilty of insurrection due to his
actions on January 6, 2021, as the foundation for the Court’s judgment was related to the powers
of states. Last December, the Colorado Supreme Court had decided that “Trump did not merely
incite the insurrection…he continued to support it.” However, Trump’s lawyer’s reaffirmed his
claims that he “did not ‘incite’ anything.”

As per the ruling, the possibility of Congress rejecting electoral college votes under
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment is seemingly off the table. The Supreme Court’s decision
implied that, in order for Congress to enforce the provision concerning insurrection, they would
be required to use legislation as opposed to, as Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson wrote in their
concurring opinion, “general federal statutes requiring the government to comply with the law.”

The ruling comes as a significant victory for Trump, who appears likely to face President
Biden as the Republican nominee in the upcoming Presidential election. “[The Supreme Court]
worked long, they worked hard and frankly, they worked very quickly on something that will be
spoken about 100 years from now and 200 years from now, extremely important,” he said.
“Essentially, you cannot take somebody out of a race because an opponent would like to have it
that way.” The Supreme Court will also decide next month whether Trump can be criminally
charged for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Meanwhile, Biden campaign principal
deputy campaign manager, Quentic Fulks, said that “We don’t really care,” and that “Our focus
since day one of launching this campaign has been to defeat Donald Trump at the ballot box.”