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After the Colorado Supreme Court's unprecedented decision to remove former President Donald Trump from the state's 2024 ballot, one of the justices warned of subsequent "chaos" in the United States.
The Colorado Supreme Court's 4-3 ruling determined that the MAGA leader isn't an eligible presidential candidate because of a Civil War-era clause in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that mandates officials who take an oath to support the Constitution to be banned from office in the future if they engage in "insurrection."
Those fighting Trump's eligibility say his actions during and related to the January 6, 2021, siege on the U.S. Capitol amounted to engaging in an insurrection. The result of Tuesday's ruling in Colorado will be held, pending the results of Trump's appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The issue of whether Trump could be barred from the ballots of several states has been brewing for months. A lower court judge in Colorado already agreed that Trump engaged in insurrection in encouraging the Capitol attack and seeking to overthrow the 2020 election result. Trump appealed the insurrection ruling. The former president has continued to deny any wrongdoing and has repeatedly said that the January 6 case is part of a political witch hunt against him.
Newsweek reached out via email on Tuesday to Trump's representatives for comment.
Three of the seven justices on the Colorado Supreme Court dissented, arguing the former president didn't have a fair trial.
Chief Justice Brian D. Boatright dissented in addition to Justices Maria E. Berkenkotter and Carlos Samour.
Samour warned of "chaos" in the aftermath of the ruling.
A spokesperson for the Colorado Supreme Court declined a Newsweek editor's request for interview and comment.
"The decision to bar former President Donald J. Trump ('President Trump')—by all accounts the current leading Republican presidential candidate (and reportedly the current leading overall presidential candidate)—from Colorado's presidential primary ballot flies in the face of the due process doctrine," Samour wrote in his dissent.
The justice said Tuesday's ruling sanctions "makeshift proceedings" by the lower court, which he argues did not allow for the former president to have a fair trial.
"Because most other states don't have the Election Code provisions we do ... will inevitably lead to the disqualification of President Trump from the presidential primary ballot in less than all fifty states, thereby risking chaos in our country," Samour wrote. "This can't possibly be the outcome the framers intended."
The Colorado Supreme Court's ruling only applies to the state but will have lingering ramifications in the 2024 presidential race, where Trump is the GOP front-runner. Colorado election officials said the ballot issue needs to be settled by January 5, which is the state's deadline for candidates to appear on the GOP primary ballot.
In the historic ruling, the Colorado justices wrote in the majority opinion that Trump's actions on January 6 "constituted overt, voluntary, and direct participation in the insurrection."
"President Trump did not merely incite the insurrection," the majority wrote in the opinion. "Even when the siege on the Capitol was fully underway, he continued to support it by repeatedly demanding that Vice President (Mike) Pence refuse to perform his constitutional duty and by calling Senators to persuade them to stop the counting of electoral votes."
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About the writer
Maura Zurick is the Newsweek Weekend Night Editor based in Cleveland, Ohio. Her focus is reporting on U.S. national news ... Read more