The U.S. Supreme Court will chart the nation’s political future as it confronts a potentially stark choice over efforts to remove Donald Trump from this year’s presidential ballot for trying to overturn his 2020 election loss.
The U.S. Supreme Court will chart the nation’s political future as it confronts a potentially stark choice over efforts to remove Donald Trump from this year’s presidential ballot for trying to overturn his 2020 election loss.
The court’s options include putting the kibosh on challenges to Trump’s candidacy with a ruling that keeps him on the ballot nationwide. Under another scenario, the court rules against the former president and paves the way for a year of unprecedented constitutional turbulence.
Either outcome is plausible as the justices weigh calls from both sides to review a Colorado Supreme Court ruling that said Trump forfeited his right to run again by engaging in an insurrection. The ruling, which said Trump incited the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, was the first ever to invoke the Constitution’s insurrection clause against an ex-president.
In an appeal filed late Wednesday, Trump urged the high court to declare that he didn’t take part in an insurrection. He and the Colorado Republican Party also say the clause, part of the post-Civil War 14th Amendment, doesn’t apply to presidents and can’t be enforced unless Congress acts first.
If the court backs Trump on any of those issues, “that ends it,” said Michael Dorf, a constitutional law professor at Cornell Law School. “Then eligibility challenges everywhere dissolve, and he’s on the ballot.”
The case has the potential to rival Bush v. Gore, the divided Supreme Court ruling that sealed the 2000 presidential election for Republican George W. Bush after a five-week deadlock over Florida ballot recounts. The high court since then has grown even more conservative, in large part because of Trump’s three appointees. It’s also grown more polarizing amid blockbuster rulings and ethics controversies.
