U.S. Supreme Court to decide if Trump can be left off 2024 presidential ballots

Justices acknowledged need to decide quickly ahead of upcoming primary votes

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The U.S. Supreme Court said Friday it will decide whether former U.S. president Donald Trump can be kept off the ballot because of his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, inserting the court squarely in the 2024 presidential campaign.

The justices acknowledged the need to reach a decision quickly, as voters will soon begin casting presidential primary ballots across the country.

The court agreed to take up a case from Colorado stemming from Trump's role in the events that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Arguments will be held in early February.

The court will be considering for the first time the meaning and reach of a provision of the 14th Amendment of the constitution, which bars some people who "engaged in insurrection" from holding public office. The amendment was adopted in 1868, following the Civil War.

It has been so rarely used that the nation's highest court has had no previous occasion to interpret it.

Colorado ruling

Colorado's Supreme Court, by a 4-3 vote, ruled last month that Trump should not be on the Republican primary ballot.

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The decision was the first time the 14th Amendment was used to bar a presidential contender from the ballot.

Trump is separately appealing to state court a ruling by Maine's Democratic secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, that he was ineligible to appear on that state's ballot over his role in the Capitol attack.

Both the Colorado Supreme Court and the Maine secretary of state's rulings are on hold until the appeals play out.

The high court's decision to intervene, which both sides called for, is its most direct involvement in a presidential election since Bush v. Gore in 2000, when a conservative majority effectively decided the election for Republican George W. Bush. Only Justice Clarence Thomas remains from that court.

Three of the nine Supreme Court justices were appointed by Trump, though they have repeatedly ruled against him in 2020 election-related lawsuits, as well as his efforts to keep documents related to Jan. 6 and his tax returns from being turned over to congressional committees.

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At the same time, Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh have been in the majority on conservative-driven decisions that overturned the five-decade-old constitutional right to abortion, expanded gun rights and struck down affirmative action in college admissions.

Some Democratic lawmakers have called on Thomas to step aside from the case because of his wife's support for Trump's effort to overturn the results of the election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

Thomas is unlikely to agree. He has recused himself from only one other case related to the 2020 election, involving former law clerk John Eastman, and so far the people trying to disqualify Trump haven't asked him to recuse.

The 4-3 Colorado decision cites a ruling by Gorsuch when he was a federal judge in that state.

That Gorsuch decision upheld Colorado's move to strike a naturalized citizen from the state's presidential ballot because he was born in Guyana and didn't meet the constitutional requirements to run for office.

The court found that Trump likewise doesn't meet the qualifications due to his role in the U.S. Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021.

• Trump asks Supreme Court to intervene after being disqualified from Colorado ballot

That day in 2021, near the end of his presidency, Trump held a rally outside the White House and exhorted his supporters to "fight like hell" before they walked to the Capitol.

The two-sentence provision in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment states that anyone who swore an oath to uphold the constitution and then "engaged in insurrection" against it is no longer eligible for state or federal office.

After Congress passed an amnesty for most of the former confederates the measure targeted in 1872, the provision fell into disuse until dozens of suits were filed to keep Trump off the ballot this year.

Only the one in Colorado was successful.

Trump's arguments

Trump had asked the court to overturn the Colorado ruling without even hearing arguments.

"The Colorado Supreme Court decision would unconstitutionally disenfranchise millions of voters in Colorado and likely be used as a template to disenfranchise tens of millions of voters nationwide," Trump's lawyers wrote.