A unanimous U.S. Supreme Court handed former president Donald Trump a major victory Monday, reversing the Colorado Supreme Court and ruling he can remain on the ballot in all 50 states in the face of challenges claiming that he violated the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment.
Only Congress -- not states -- can enforce the Fourteenth Amendment, the court ruled. Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment prevents individuals from holding certain positions if they have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the United States. It was added to the Constitution following the Civil War.
A group of Colorado voters claimed that Trump violated the amendment with his actions on Jan. 6, 2021. The Colorado Supreme Court sided with the voters, and Trump’s legal team appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the States, responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates, we reverse,” the court ruled in its 9-0 decision, which was not signed. (Four justices issued concurring opinions).
The decision was not a surprise. During oral arguments, a majority of the justices expressed skepticism about the Colorado high court’s decision. The case was brought by four Republican voters and two unaffiliated voters in Colorado.
The Supreme Court’s ruling pointed to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states: “The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”
“This case raises the question whether the States, in addition to Congress, may also enforce Section 3,” the court ruled. “We conclude that States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office. But States have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency.”
The decision cited a senator from the 1800s saying that Section 5 “casts upon Congress the responsibility of seeing to it, for the future, that all the sections of the amendment are carried out in good faith.”
If the Supreme Court let the Colorado decision stand, “the result could well be that a single candidate would be declared ineligible in some States, but not others, based on the same conduct (and perhaps even the same factual record),” the opinion said.
Four justices issued concurring opinions.
Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson said they agreed with the court’s judgment but believed the opinion had gone too far in its reasoning.
“Although we agree that Colorado cannot enforce Section 3, we protest the majority’s effort to use this case to define the limits of federal enforcement of that provision,” they wrote. “Because we would decide only the issue before us, we concur only in the judgment.”
Justice Amy Coney Barrett also issued a concurring opinion. The Colorado decision, she wrote, “does not require us to address the complicated question whether federal legislation is the exclusive vehicle through which Section 3 can be enforced.”
“All nine Justices agree on the outcome of this case,” she wrote. “That is the message Americans should take home.”
Image credit: ©Getty Images/Douglas Rissing
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
