Former President Donald Trump filed a petition to the Supreme Court on Wednesday asking the justices to reverse a decision by Colorado’s top court that would remove him from the state’s primary ballot if the nine-member bench allows that ruling to stand.
The Colorado Supreme Court, composed entirely of Democratic appointees, ruled 4-3 on Dec. 19 that Trump was ineligible to run for president under the 14th Amendment‘s insurrection clause. The expected appeal, which a source told the Washington Examiner was filed on Wednesday, comes after the state’s Republican Party asked the nation’s highest court to overturn the decision last week.
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“In our system of ‘government of the people, by the people, [and] for the people,’ Colorado’s ruling is not and cannot be correct,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in a 43-page filing.
“This Court should grant certiorari to consider this question of paramount importance, summarily reverse the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling, and return the right to vote for their candidate of choice to the voters,” the lawyers stated in the filing, using a term that means a court agreeing to consider the case on the merits for oral argument.
The former president’s counsel argued that the question of eligibility to serve as president is “properly reserved” for Congress, not state courts, to decide.
“By considering the question of President Trump’s eligibility and barring him from the ballot, the Colorado Supreme Court arrogated Congress’ authority,” the lawyers said.
In his filing, Trump’s lawyers argued that a recent decision by Maine’s Democratic secretary of state to remove him from the primary ballot there “used the Colorado proceedings as justification for unlawfully striking President Trump from that state’s ballot.”
Both the Colorado Republican Party and the liberal group representing voters who sought Trump’s removal have urged the Supreme Court to move swiftly on the petition, stressing the importance of settling the matter as soon as possible to meet important deadlines to procure the state’s primary ballots.
Trump’s legal team appealed the Maine decision on Tuesday to the state’s appeals court, presenting similar arguments used in his appeal of the Colorado decision on Wednesday.
Both decisions have come with automatic holds to allow appeals to be considered. It’s not yet clear how the high court may rule on the ballot disqualification matter, as it has not ruled on the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause since the amendment was ratified in 1868.
Petitioners, including Norma Anderson, who was also the former Republican majority leader of the Colorado House and Senate, succeeded in convincing the Colorado Supreme Court that Trump’s rhetoric prompted the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
“The mob’s overriding purpose was to help keep Trump in office by preventing the constitutionally mandated counting of the electoral votes that had been cast in President Biden’s favor,” Anderson’s attorneys wrote in a brief that also surfaced on the Supreme Court’s docket Tuesday.
Anderson also cited that Trump supporters at the riot told police officers that “Trump sent them,” adding they “referenced war (including the Civil War), revolution, and stopping certification of the election.”
The Colorado Supreme Court justices ruled that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which prevents people from holding office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” after swearing an oath to support the Constitution, applied to the presidential office. That court’s 4-3 holding marked a reversal from a Denver-based judge who decided Trump did engage in insurrection on Jan. 6 but that the measure of the 14th Amendment couldn’t be applied to him.
“President Trump incited and encouraged the use of violence and lawless action to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power,” the Colorado justices wrote in their 134-page majority opinion.
In their Wednesday filing, Trump’s lawyers argued that the high court should focus on the Colorado Republican State Central Committee position that “Section 3 is not self-executing.”
“Even if Section 3 does not require enforcement legislation to have effect, the lack of such legislation deprives the courts of judicially manageable standards,” Trump’s attorneys argued.
“Procedurally, Section 3 is silent on whether a jury, judge, or lone state election official makes factual determination and is likewise silent on the appropriate standard of review, creating the prospect of some courts adopting a preponderance of the evidence standard, others a clear and convincing evidence standard, while still others requiring a criminal conviction,” Trump’s attorneys wrote, pointing to an inconsistency among courts as to how Section 3 applies.
Defense attorneys also pointed to the subjectivity of the terms “engage” and “insurrection.”
“The result is that 51 different jurisdictions may (and have) adopted divergent rulings based on different standards on the same set of operative facts,” Trump’s attorneys said.
Colorado’s Democratic secretary of state, Jena Griswold, asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to answer whether Trump can be removed from the ballot and provided the justices with a timetable of forthcoming election deadlines that her office is required to meet under state law.
Other states, including Michigan and California, have turned down efforts to remove Trump from primary ballots. Most of the lawsuits have been filed by liberal litigation firms representing voters seeking to keep Trump from running; at least 30 states have seen such challenges filed in court.
Trump has decried the rulings against his ballot eligibility as a sign the nation is turning into a “banana republic.”
Republicans and some Democrats have been highly critical of the tactic of removing Trump from the primary ballot, with most critics arguing that voters should be the ones to decide whether Trump is the nominee to take on President Joe Biden in the November election.
For now, the removal of Trump from primary ballots in Colorado and Maine, both of which could be overturned, isn’t likely to have an impact on his pursuit of the GOP nomination. Trump holds major leads in polls for the primary contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina; winning all three could secure his position.
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With the two indictments brought by special counsel Jack Smith, in addition to those of Alvin Bragg and Fani Willis, the district attorneys for New York County, covering Manhattan, and Georgia’s Fulton County, respectively, Trump is grappling with 91 criminal charges, including allegations regarding efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Read the full 43-page filing:
