CV NEWS FEED // Former President Donald Trump has officially appealed the Colorado Supreme Court’s controversial decision removing him from the state’s ballot to the U.S. Supreme Court, who within hours, agreed to hear the case.
“The question of eligibility to serve as President of the United States is properly reserved for Congress, not the state courts, to consider and decide,” the 45th president’s lawyers stated in the appeal.
“By considering the question of President Trump’s eligibility and barring him from the ballot, the Colorado Supreme Court arrogated Congress’ authority,” the appeal continued. “In addition, even if the Colorado Supreme Court could consider challenges to President Trump’s eligibility, which it cannot, it misapplied the law.”
A narrow 4-3 majority of the Colorado Supreme Court held on December 19 that “President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
This section of the country’s governing document states:
No person shall be … President … having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.
Trump’s lawyers took various issues with the Colorado Supreme Court using this part of the Constitution to disqualify their client.
“First, the President is not ‘an officer of the United States,’” they wrote in the appeal. “[H]e took a different oath than the one set forth in section 3, and the presidency is not an ‘office under the United States.’”
“Thus, President Trump falls outside the scope of section 3,” they pointed out:
Second, the Colorado Supreme Court erred in how it described President Trump’s role in the events of January 6, 2021. It was not “insurrection” and President Trump in no way “engaged” in “insurrection.”
The Supreme Court agreed to hear the former president’s appeal just hours after it was filed.
The Associated Press (AP) reported that “[a]rguments will be held in early February.”
This will mark the first ever Supreme Court case directly relating to the scope of section 3 of the 14th Amendment. AP noted that the section “has been so rarely used that the nation’s highest court had no previous occasion to interpret it.”
The Daily Wire indicated that Trump’s “appeal came one day after [he] appealed a similar decision in Maine by the state’s Democratic secretary of state to kick him off the ballot.”
“The former president and current frontrunner for the Republican nomination will be allowed to be on the Colorado ballot for now thanks to a previous appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court by the Colorado Republican Party,” The Daily Wire added.
“The Colorado secretary of state will include former President Donald Trump on the 2024 Colorado primary ballot after Republicans filed an appeal to the Supreme Court,” FOX reported last week:
Following the appeal, [Democratic] Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold announced that she will include Trump on the primary ballot on the Jan. 5 certification deadline, unless the U.S. Supreme Court affirms the lower court’s ruling
