Supreme Court Appears Dubious of Efforts To Disqualify Trump Over January 6 Capitol Attack
Only Justice Sonia Sotomayor sounds like she might vote to uphold the Colorado Supreme Court ruling that found that Mr. Trump ‘engaged in insurrection’ and is ineligible to be president.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court sounds broadly skeptical of efforts to kick President Trump off the 2024 ballot.
In arguments ticking past 90 minutes Thursday, both conservative and liberal justices raised questions of whether Mr. Trump can be disqualified from being president again because of his efforts to undo his loss in the 2020 election, ending with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Concerns included whether Congress must act before states can invoke a constitutional provision that was adopted after the Civil War to prevent former officeholders who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office again. There also were questions about whether the president is covered by the provision.
Without such congressional legislation, Justice Elena Kagan was among several justices who wanted to know “why a single state should decide who gets to be president of the United States.”
Eight of the nine justices suggested that they were open to at least some of the arguments made by Mr. Trump’s lawyer at the Supreme Court, Jonathan Mitchell. Mr. Trump could win his case if the court finds just one of those arguments persuasive.
Only Justice Sonia Sotomayor sounded like she might vote to uphold the Colorado Supreme Court ruling that found that Mr. Trump “engaged in insurrection” and is ineligible to be president. The state court ruled Mr. Trump should not be on the ballot for the state’s Republican primary on March 5.
There was little talk of whether Mr. Trump actually “engaged in insurrection” following the 2020 election, though Mr. Mitchell argued that the Capitol riot was not an insurrection and, even if it was, Mr. Trump did not participate.
The case marks the first time the justices are considering Section 3 of the 14th amendment.
It sets up precisely the kind of case that the court likes to avoid, one in which it is the final arbiter of a political dispute.
Chief Justice Roberts worried that a ruling against Mr. Trump would prompt efforts to disqualify other candidates, “and surely some of those will succeed.”
Associated Press
