State election officials tried to erase President Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot using a clause of the Constitution most people had never heard of before that fight. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment bars anyone who swore an oath to the Constitution and then engaged in insurrection or rebellion from holding office again. Colorado’s Supreme Court applied it to Trump in December 2023.

The U.S. Supreme Court reversed that decision unanimously three months later in Trump v. Anderson, holding that states have no power to enforce Section 3 against federal candidates and that only Congress, through Section 5 legislation, can define how the clause actually operates.