(DailyVantage.com) – Former president Donald Trump has scored his first legal victory in a while, winning his petition to the U.S. Supreme Court to rescind the order that his name not appear in the ballots for the Republican primary elections in Colorado.
The ruling of the country’s highest court overturned a decision handed down by the Colorado Supreme Court that would have taken Trump off the primary ballots in the state. The removal was over the issue of the now-infamous “insurrection clause” in Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which bans persons who have committed insurrection from running for public office.
An unsigned opinion issued by the Supreme Court said that states have the power to determine who can or cannot run – but only for state offices. However, the Supreme Court noted that the Constitution does not give states the authority to disqualify someone running for federal offices, “especially the Presidency.” Only Congress, the high court said, has the power to implement the procedures for disqualification stipulated in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, as well as determine through specific legislation which individuals would be covered by the insurrectionist clause.
The decision will allow Trump to keep his place on the primary ballots in Colorado – primary ballots in the state kept Trump’s name while the case was pending.
The Supreme Court’s decision was unanimous. All nine justices agreed that Colorado overstepped its authority by banning Trump from appearing on the ballots for the primary election.
However, the liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Elena Kagan, opined that the majority was attempting to “resolve questions not before us [the Supreme Court],” referring to how any enforcement of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment should be conducted.
The majority, the justices wrote, were attempting to “insulate all alleged insurrectionists from future challenges to their holding federal office.” In addition, the statement of the majority indicating that Congress is the sole deciding authority on Section 3 implementation is “musings are as inadequately supported as they are gratuitous.”
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