The Colorado Supreme Court declared on Tuesday that Donald Trump cannot run for president in 2024 due to the violence in the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
The landmark 14th Amendment ruling that disqualified Trump from the presidential primary vote sets up a legal dispute over the outcome of the upcoming election before the country’s top court.
In a 4-3 decision that will soon be challenged, most of Colorado’s seven judges declared that the previous president “engaged in insurrection.” This decision is sure to draw harsh criticism from Trump’s followers and loud cheers from those who have denounced his actions since January 6.
“President Trump’s direct and express efforts, over several months, exhorting his supporters to march to the Capitol to prevent what he falsely characterized as an alleged fraud on the people of this country were indisputably overt and voluntary,” the justices wrote.
“Moreover,” they wrote, “the evidence amply showed that President Trump undertook all these actions to aid and further a common unlawful purpose that he himself conceived and set in motion: prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election and stop the peaceful transfer of power.”
Considering this, the decision declares, “[W]e conclude that because President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President under Section Three, it would be a wrongful act under the Election Code for the Secretary to list President Trump as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot.”
Awaiting an appeal, the court postponed their decision until January 4.
Chief Justice Brian D. Boatright, Justices Carlos A. Samour Jr. and Maria E. Berkenkotter were the three judges who dissented.
Boatright, in his dissent, wrote that the “absence of an insurrection-related conviction” against Trump should have called for the case to be dismissed.
Samour wrote that the majority’s opinion “flies in the face of the due process doctrine.”
The decision comes after a protracted legal battle in Colorado over Trump’s eligibility to run on the ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, a Civil War-era constitutional provision that bars former office holders from seeking reelection if they swore allegiance to the document and then participated in “insurrection or rebellion” against the United States.
