[ The decision marks the first time in history that Section 3 of
the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential
candidate.]
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COLORADO SUPREME COURT DECLARES DONALD TRUMP INELIGIBLE FOR THE
PRESIDENCY UNDER CONSTITUTION’S INSURRECTION CLAUSE  
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Associated Press
December 19, 2023
The Boston Globe
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_ The decision marks the first time in history that Section 3 of the
14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate. _


Former President Donald J. Trump at a rally in Durham, N.H., last
week., Doug Mills/The New York Times

 

DENVER — The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday declared former
president Donald Trump ineligible for the White House under the U.S.
Constitution’s insurrection clause and removed him from the
state’s presidential primary ballot, setting up a likely showdown in
the nation’s highest court to decide whether the front-runner for
the GOP nomination can remain in the race.

The decision from a court whose justices were all appointed by
Democratic governors marks the first time in history that Section 3
of the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential
candidate.

“A majority of the court holds that Trump is disqualified from
holding the office of president under Section 3 of the 14th
Amendment,” the court wrote in its 4-3 decision.

Colorado’s highest court overturned a ruling from a district court
judge who found that Trump incited an insurrection for his role in the
Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, but said he could not be barred
from the ballot because it was unclear that the provision was intended
to cover the presidency.

The court stayed its decision until Jan. 4, or until the U.S. Supreme
Court rules on the case.

“We do not reach these conclusions lightly,” wrote the court’s
majority. “We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the
questions now before us. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to
apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by
public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”

Trump’s attorneys had promised to appeal any disqualification
immediately to the nation’s highest court, which has the final say
about constitutional matters. His campaign said it was working on a
response to the ruling.

Trump lost Colorado by 13 percentage points in 2020 and doesn’t need
the state to win next year’s presidential election. But the danger
for the former president is that more courts and election officials
will follow Colorado’s lead and exclude Trump from must-win states.

Colorado officials say the issue must be settled by Jan. 5, the
deadline for the state to print its presidential primary ballots.

Dozens of lawsuits have been filed nationally to disqualify Trump
under Section 3, which was designed to keep former Confederates from
returning to government after the Civil War. It bars from office
anyone who swore an oath to “support” the Constitution and then
“engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against it, and has been
used only a handful of times since the decade after the Civil War.

The Colorado case is the first where the plaintiffs succeeded. After a
weeklong hearing in November, District Judge Sarah B. Wallace found
that Trump indeed had “engaged in insurrection” by inciting
the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and her ruling that kept him on
the ballot was a fairly technical one.

Trump’s attorneys convinced Wallace that, because the language in
Section 3 refers to “officers of the United States” who take an
oath to “support” the Constitution, it must not apply to the
president, who is not included as an “officer of the United
States” elsewhere in the document and whose oath is to “preserve,
protect and defend” the Constitution.

The provision also says offices covered include senator,
representative, electors of the president and vice president, and all
others “under the United States,” but doesn’t name the
presidency.

The state’s highest court didn’t agree, siding with attorneys for
six Colorado Republican and unaffiliated voters who argued that it was
nonsensical to imagine the framers of the amendment, fearful of former
Confederates returning to power, would bar them from low-level offices
but not the highest one in the land.

“You’d be saying a rebel who took up arms against the government
couldn’t be a county sheriff, but could be the president,”
attorney Jason Murray said in arguments before the court
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early December.

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* Section 3 of the 14th Amendment; Insurrection; Donald Trump;
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