US Supreme Court to decide if Trump can be kept off 2024 ballots

The Supreme Court has said it will decide whether former president Donald Trump can be kept off the ballot because of his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, inserting the court squarely in the 2024 presidential campaign.

The justices acknowledged on Friday the need to reach a decision quickly, as voters will soon begin casting presidential primary ballots across the country.

The court agreed to take up Trump's appeal of a case from Colorado stemming from his role in the events that culminated in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

Arguments will be held in early February.

The court will be considering for the first time the meaning and reach of a provision of the 14th Amendment barring some people who "engaged in the insurrection" from holding public office. The amendment was adopted in 1868, following the Civil War.

It has been so rarely used that the nation's highest court had no previous occasion to interpret it.

Colorado's Supreme Court, by a 4-3 vote, ruled last month that Trump should not be on the Republican primary ballot.

The decision was the first time the 14th Amendment was used to bar a presidential contender from the ballot.

The high court's decision to intervene, which both sides called for, is the most direct involvement in a presidential election since Bush v. Gore in 2000, when a conservative majority effectively decided the election for Republican George W. Bush. Only Justice Clarence Thomas remains from that court.

Trump had asked the court to overturn the Colorado ruling without even hearing arguments. "The Colorado Supreme Court decision would unconstitutionally disenfranchise millions of voters in Colorado and likely be used as a template to disenfranchise tens of millions of voters nationwide," Trump's lawyers wrote.

They argue that Trump should win on many grounds, including that the events of January 6 did not constitute an insurrection. Even if it did, they wrote, Trump himself had not engaged in insurrection.

They also contend that the insurrection clause does not apply to the president and that Congress must act, not individual states.

'Case of national importance'

Critics of the former president who sued in Colorado agreed that the justices should step in now and resolve the issue, as do many election law experts.

"This case is of utmost national importance. And given the upcoming presidential primary schedule, there is no time to wait for the issues to percolate further. The Court should resolve this case on an expedited timetable so that voters in Colorado and elsewhere will know whether Trump is indeed constitutionally ineligible when they cast their primary ballots," lawyers for the Colorado plaintiffs told the Supreme Court.

The issue of whether Trump can be on the ballot is not the only matter related to the former president or January 6 that has reached the high court.

The justices last month declined a request from special counsel Jack Smith to swiftly take up and rule on Trump’s claims that he is immune from prosecution in a case charging him with plotting to overturn the 2020 presidential election, though the issue could be back before the court soon depending on the ruling of a Washington-based appeals court.

And the court has said that it intends to hear an appeal that could upend hundreds of charges stemming from the Capitol riot, including against Trump.

Trump already faces criminal charges in two cases related to his effort to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden.

Trump also has appealed to a Maine state court a decision by that state's top election official barring him from the primary ballot under the same constitutional provision at issue in the Colorado case.

While the Colorado case could hamper Trump's bid to win back the presidency, it also has major implications for the justices. Given the political nature of the dispute, they run the risk of appearing partisan whichever way they lean.