Donald Trump Celebrates Unanimous Supreme Court Ruling Keeping Him on Ballot: ‘BIG WIN FOR AMERICA!’

Republican presidential candidate former U.S. President Donald Trump looks on during a campaign ral
Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Nick Gilbertson

Former President Donald Trump celebrated the unanimous Supreme Court ruling keeping him on the presidential ballot in Colorado and other states that ruled him ineligible.

Minutes after the court released its decision, the 45th president took to Truth Social to call the ruling a “BIG WIN FOR AMERICA!!!”

In a 9-0 decision, the court overturned the Colorado State Supreme Court’s ruling that sought to bar Trump from the ballot. The Colorado court had cited Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment, otherwise known as the “insurrection clause.”

“This case raises the question whether the States, in addition to Congress, may also enforce Section 3,” the decision reads in part. “We conclude that States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office. But States have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency.”

The ruling furthermore finds that “nothing in the Constitution delegates to the States any power to enforce Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates.”

Notably, other states, including Illinois and Maine, had ruled that Trump was disqualified from their states’s ballots, also citing the Fourteenth Amendment. Monday’s ruling squashes those decisions as well.

The Colorado Supreme Court had decided in December Trump had “engaged in insurrection as those terms are used in Section Three” of the Fourteenth Amendment. Yet, this was despite him not being criminally convicted – let alone charged – with inciting an insurrection or of seditious conspiracy in either of the federal proceedings against him. Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) subsequently ruled on December 28 that Trump’s “primary petition is invalid,” in part based on Section Three.

The case is Trump v Anderson, No. 23–719, in the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

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