U.S. Supreme Court Rules on State Ballots and the 14th Amendment

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled states cannot use 14th Amendment to remove former President Trump from state ballots. The ruling reverses a Colorado ruling that disqualified him from returning to office because of his conduct around Jan. 6, 2021. The justices “said the Constitution does not permit a single state to disqualify a presidential candidate from national office” and “warned of disruption and a chaotic state-by-state patchwork if a candidate for nationwide office could be declared ineligible in some states, but not others, based on the same conduct.” The court did not weigh in on the question of whether Trump engaged in an insurrection by attempting to subvert the 2020 election results or stoking the violence on Jan. 6th, but ruled “that only Congress, not the states, can disqualify a presidential candidate under the Constitution’s ‘insurrection clause’.”