So it has barred him from appearing on the list of candidates running in the Republican primary in Colorado. Trump immediately called the ruling “election fraud” and announced he would appeal to the US Supreme Court. It should be decided soon because those primaries are already on March 5. The list of candidates should be officially accepted on January 5.

Leading Republican politicians disapproved of the court’s ruling. House Speaker Mike Johnson called the report a “thinly veiled partisan attack.”

Trump’s rivals for the Republican nomination also decried the ruling. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley both said voters should decide who the Republican nominee is, not judges, and who will ultimately be president.

Other states

Trump’s eligibility has been challenged in several other states, but Colorado wins first.

An amendment to the constitution was added in 1868 which, among other things, made it impossible for the rebels to play a role in the national government. At the time, it was about those who joined the Southern states in the Civil War when they seceded.

A lower court in Colorado found Trump guilty of sedition in favor of the plaintiffs. Because of him, many of his supporters do not believe that he lost the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. After Trump’s speech in Washington DC on January 6, 2021, many of them stormed the Capitol. At the time, Congress sealed the transition of power to Joe Biden. Trump made no effort for hours to stop the attack, which left many dead.

But that lower court left Trump on the ballot because of the controversial amendment’s vague wording. It excludes rebels who have previously sworn to the Constitution as a member of Congress or another official of the government, but does not expressly mention the president. It says such rebels should never again hold office in government and lists examples again, but not the presidency again.

According to the judge, the writers of the constitution seem to have deliberately left out the president.

14th Amendment

The Colorado Supreme Court disagreed. It upheld a judge’s ruling in January 2021 that Trump was guilty of sedition, but concluded that the 14th Amendment applied to him.

According to a majority of four of the seven judges, the contrary would be simply foolish. Otherwise, the article would “disqualify every oath-breaking rebel except the most powerful, and bar oath-breakers from all but the highest office in the land.” Both conclusions contradict the plain language and history of the article.

That last sentence is important because conservative members of the U.S. Supreme Court place more emphasis on a literal reading of the Constitution and an interpretation in the spirit of its framers.

If the high court in Washington accepts the Colorado ruling and declares it valid nationally, it will end Trump’s ambitions for a second term as president, who polls show has a good chance.

The Court may be reluctant to do so because it would reinforce the belief among many Republicans that America is no longer a democracy. Millions of Americans will decide, as in 2020, that the powers that be established will no longer allow Trump to be president.

The three members of the Colorado Supreme Court who voted against the ruling could lead their national counterparts to a different ruling based on a formality. One of them believes that the judge cannot simply conclude that Trump committed treason because he was never officially charged. The second looks at the text of Colorado’s election laws and finds nowhere that the state unconstitutionally requires candidates to be tested.

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