Supreme Court restores Trump to 2024 presidential primary ballots, rejecting state efforts to ban him over Capitol attack

WASHINGTON (AP) — The& Supreme Court& on Monday restored& Donald Trump& to 2024 presidential primary ballots, rejecting state attempts to hold the Republican former president accountable for the Capitol riot. The justices ruled a day before the Super Tuesday primaries that states cannot invoke a post-Civil War constitutional provision to keep presidential candidates from appearing on ballots. That power resides with Congress, the court wrote in an unsigned opinion. The outcome ends efforts in& Colorado,& Illinois,& Maine& and elsewhere to kick Trump, the front-runner for his party’s nomination, off the ballot because of his attempts to undo his loss in the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden, culminating in& the Jan. 6, 2021, attack& on the Capitol. Trump’s case was the first at the Supreme Court dealing with& a provision of the 14th Amendment& that was adopted after the Civil War to prevent former officeholders who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office again. Colorado’s Supreme Court, in a first-of-its-kind ruling, had decided that the provision, Section 3, could be applied to Trump, who that court found incited the Capitol attack. No court before had applied Section 3 to a presidential candidate. Some election observers have warned that a ruling requiring...