Election 2024: Supreme Court Rules States Cannot Remove Trump From Ballot For Jan. 6 Insurrection

By Amy Howe\SCOTUSBlog The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that states cannot disqualify former President Donald Trump from the ballot for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol. In an unsigned opinion, a majority of the justices held that only Congress – and not the states – can enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which was enacted in the wake of the Civil War to disqualify individuals from holding office who had previously served in the federal or state government before the war but then supported the Confederacy, against candidates for federal offices.   All nine justices agreed that Colorado cannot remove Trump from the ballot. But four justices – Justice Amy Coney Barrett in a separate opinion and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson in a joint opinion – argued that their colleagues should have stopped there and not decided anything more. The court’s decision comes just one day before Super Tuesday, when 16 states and one territory will hold their primary elections. Trump currently holds an overwhelming lead in the race for the Republican nomination. The dispute leading to Monday’s opinion began last year in a state court in Colorado....