Colorado Supreme Court kicks Donald Trump off the state's 2024 ballot for violating the U.S. Constitution
The ruling marks the first time a 14th Amendment challenge to Trump's candidacy has been successful.
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Cool, if only the states he has a chance of winning would follow suit.
precedent! a ruling here could be used in a non hostile state!
As much as I'd love to see other states follow, I don't see how this would be relevant in any other state. It's a state supreme court ruling on a issue within their own state. Any other state trying to claim precedence would be really strange
It's a constitutional amendment that was ruled on. The Constitution applies the same in all states. If it were just Colorado law I think it would be much harder to appeal the ruling to the US Supreme Court.
It's been reaffirmed many, many times that states are allowed to do essentially whatever they please when it comes to how they run their own election, outside of discriminating against protected classes. Even if it were to get shot down, they could pass a law simply disallowing their electors from voting for Trump.
Could you explain the relevance? Because I'm not seeing it.
Laws targeting one individual are explicitly unconstitutional. In a scenario where SCOTUS overturns Colorado (which is unlikely) they couldn't just get around that by passing a law that says "Trump can't run".
Article I, Section 9, Clause 3:
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
More context here:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-1/section-9/clause-3/bills-of-attainder
In fact, let's try this from another angle altogether: if it were legal for a state to bar an individual (or entire political party, since that's not a protected class!), then how long would it be before Florida or Texas passed a law that outlawed Biden/Democrats from entering elections in the state? If that were legal, the entire system would collapse into chaos, even more than it is already.
Again, this assumes SCOTUS overturns CO. That seems unlikely, so it's probably a moot point, but in that scenario, there is no end-run around the ruling.
And a court judgment is not a bill. Ruling about a specific individual's case is precisely what courts are for. By your logic, every court ruling against a defendant would be a bill of attainder.
As for an ex post facto law, that's a law that's passed after the conduct it makes illegal, to be applied retroactively. The 14th amendment is over 100 years old.
I was specifically referring to Alto's suggestion that the Colorado legislature could pass a law that says their electors can't vote for Trump.
Oops, I missed that. In case it wasn't obvious.
The supreme court case that follows is what they are referring to and that CAN affect other states
Except that's my point. SCOTUS has held that up every step of the way. Even with how absolutely fucked the current court is, I honestly doubt they're going to decide to throw state's rights to control their elections out the window, considering they'd effectively be signing the electoral college's death warrant
There are two issues here. I don't think the Supreme Court can't decide if he goes on the ballot, but they can decide if he's eligible to become president.
States can put Trump on the ballot and send electors for him, but if the Supreme Court rules that he's ineligible, he can no more become president than if he were a child or a foreign national.
(Caveat: IANAL)
Note that this applies to the primary also, so it might damage him by encouraging his Republican challengers to stay in the race.
Nah his supporters will write him in for sure.
And that would be a literal wasted vote as it won't count.
Win-win.
Ahh but can they spell it correctly?
Theyll spell it Drumpf and try to get the votes on a technicality
Not how write ins work
Those people just won't turn out at all
Not having to spend any campaign money in Colorado means you can spend it elsewhere.