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Today the Supreme Court reversed the Colorado Supreme Court ruling to remove Trump from the state’s primary and general election ballots 9 – 0. This ruling extends to all 50 states and territories including Illinois and Maine whose courts and Secretary of State, respectively, followed Colorado’s removal – “Because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the States, responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates, we reverse.”
Trump is to remain on the primary and general election ballots.
There is more to this ruling than simple ballot access. As Andrew C McCarthy explains:
In essence, a majority consisting of five of the Court’s six conservative justices (Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh) went beyond the question about state power and ruled that Section 3 can only be enforced by congressional legislation under Section 5 of the 14th Amendment, and that the only existing statute along those lines is the penal law against insurrection, Section 2383 of the federal code.What that means is that if Donald Trump were to win the presidential election, congressional Democrats would not be able — in the next January 6 joint session of Congress — to refuse to ratify his victory on the grounds that he is an insurrectionist.Under the Court’s holding, it is now a prerequisite to enforcement of the Section 3 disqualification that a person must have been convicted under the insurrection statute. Congress could change this by new legislation, but there is no chance of that happening in this deeply divided era.
Fox News legal analyst Shannon Bream is joined by constitutional attorney’s Andrew C McCarthy and Jonathan Turley to provide a more detailed explanation of the ruling –
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