Update: Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung has released a statement about the Court's announcement. "We welcome a fair hearing at the Supreme Court to argue against the bad-faith, election-interfering, voter-suppressing, Democrat-backed and Biden-led, 14th Amendment abusing decision to remove President Trump’s name from the 2024 ballot in the state of Colorado. The so-called “ballot-challenge cases” are all part of a well-funded effort by left-wing, political activists hell-bent on stopping the lawful reelection of President Trump this November, even if it means disenfranchising voters. President Trump is dominating the polls, and the Biden presidency has failed all Americans. We are confident that the fair-minded Supreme Court will unanimously affirm the civil rights of President Trump, and the voting rights of all Americans in a ruling that will squash all of the remaining ballot challenge hoaxes once and for all," he said.
Original: On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it would take up the case involving Colorado banning former President Donald Trump from the ballot. The Colorado Supreme Court's decision came last month, a decision which Trump's campaign vowed to appeal, with that appeal being filed on Wednesday.
Supreme Court grants cert in the Trump disqualification case, on a super-compressed timeline. Oral argument in a month. (The right move, I think.) pic.twitter.com/V5GkmXArDJ
— Orin Kerr (@OrinKerr) January 5, 2024
"The justices’ order sets the case up to be heard at a speedy pace, with oral arguments scheduled for Feb. 8 and a decision to follow that could spark Trump’s removal from the ballot in states across the country," reporting from The Hill noted. There have been numerous other efforts to kick Trump off of the ballot, though almost all have failed.
As for how the case is set to go, many are expecting the justices to find in favor of Trump. "The Colorado Supreme Court was just begging the justices to review its decision because it was wrong in so many ways. Just to name a few, Trump was not charged with, no less convicted of, insurrection; Section 3 applies to presidential electors but not to the president; and Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment gives Congress, not the states, the power to enforce the amendment," Curt Levey, a constitutional law attorney and the president of the Committee for Justice, offered in a statement for Townhall.
Although he himself doesn't know if it will be a unanimous reversal, Levey also offered "it’s hard to imagine more than one or two justices voting to uphold the Colorado Supreme Court, given how legally flawed the Colorado decision was and how obvious it is that what can legally be done to Trump by partisan state officials can also legally be done to Democrat candidates."
As The Hill also went on to note, speaking about the move to kick Trump off the ballot not only out of Colorado, but Maine:
Although those rulings remain on hold until Trump’s appeals are resolved, enabling his name to remain on the ballot in the meantime, the justices’ decision to hear the Colorado case equips the high court to provide a national resolution in advance of the general election.
Trump’s political fate now lies in the hands of the conservative-majority court, which includes three Trump appointees and has never squarely resolved the meaning of the 14th Amendment’s insurrection ban.
Not only did the Colorado Supreme Court rule that Trump was ineligible according to Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, but so did Maine Secretary of State Shenna Lee Bellows, who was elected not by voters, but by the Democratic-controlled state legislature. She also has been quite cozy with President Joe Biden, which has been sharply criticized, as 2024 likely being a rematch from 2020 between Trump and President Joe Biden.
"While it’s possible the U.S. Supreme Court will rule so narrowly that the decision applies only to Colorado, it’s very unlikely because the Court surely doesn’t want to revisit this issue later this year," Levey noted, speaking about Maine.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) and National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) announced earlier on Friday that they had filed an amicus brief with the Court to keep Trump on the ballot.
The @GOP is proud to file an amicus brief in the Supreme Court with the @NRCC to ensure that the American people have the right to choose their president.
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) January 5, 2024
The effort to remove Donald Trump from the presidential ballot is an attack on our electoral system.https://t.co/IOrKwDzjMM
Also on Friday, Attorneys General Todd Rokita of Indiana and Patrick Morrisey of West Virginia announced that they were co-leading an effort of 27 states to keep Trump on the ballot and had filed an amicus brief of their own.
In addition to Indiana and West Virginia, other states where officials have signed on include Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouori, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolia, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming.
🚨BREAKING: Our office and @WestVirginiaAG are co-leading a 27-state coalition in support of @realDonaldTrump's appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States. Trust in the integrity of our elections is essential to a free republic. If activist judges in Colorado can dilute the…
— AG Todd Rokita (@AGToddRokita) January 5, 2024
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