Trump’s big win at the Supreme Court in the 14th Amendment case has sent shockwaves through the Democratic party. Who must be questioning, can anyone take on Trump in the upcoming 2024 US election?
The top court’s decision clears the way for Mr Trump to compete in the Colorado primary scheduled for Tuesday.
Trump wins big at Supreme Court
Donald Trump is and has always been the front-runner for the Republican nomination and looks likely to face a rematch with Democratic President Joe Biden in November’s general election.
A guide to the 2024 US presidential election in November
What happened at the Supreme Court today?
The US Supreme Court has struck down efforts by individual states to disqualify Donald Trump from running for president using an anti-insurrection constitutional clause.
The unanimous ruling is specific to Colorado, but it also overrides challenges brought in other states. And significantly shut down any federal intervention in the presidential campaign.
The reason why this is significant is the Democrats were hoping to get Trump kicked off the ballot, in let’s face it a last chance to win the next election.
Colorado Supreme Court had barred Mr Trump from its Republican primary, arguing he incited the 2021 Capitol riot.
The court ruled that only Congress, rather than the states, has that power. Trump’s big win at the Supreme Court could not have gone any better.
Here are some of the key takeaways from the Supreme Courts decision
Trump will appear on ballots in the presidential campaign
There was no equivocation in the Supreme Court’s short opinion: States do not have the power to remove a federal candidate – especially a president – from the ballot under the Constitution’s “insurrectionist ban.” It is Congress, the court wrote, that can enforce the provision, not states. As such in November 2024 Donald Trump will appear on ballots in all the States.
Nobody took credit for writing the opinion
The court handed down what’s known as a “per curiam” opinion, a Latin term that translates to “by the court.” Such opinions are relatively rare and are sometimes used to signal consensus – even though they are not always unanimous.
No justice signed their name to take responsibility for writing the opinion keeping Trump on the ballot.
Supreme Court clarifies federal position
The high court’s opinion went further than shutting down state enforcement of the insurrectionist ban. It appeared to make it much harder for it to be enforced at the federal level as well.
Liberal wing rebukes majority for opinion’s sweep
The court’s three liberals – Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson – sharply criticized the majority for the breadth of the opinion. The issue of Trump’s eligibility could have been decided simply, they said, by ruling that states can’t enforce the insurrectionist ban on their own.
It was not a unanimous ruling, Judge Barrett’s concern with ‘national temperature’
Barrett devoted more than half of her one-page concurrence to urging the public to look past the fact that four of the court’s members – herself included – disagreed with how broadly their colleagues decided the case.
The conservative justice stressed that although she and the three liberal justices were at odds with their other colleagues, “this is not the time to amplify disagreement with stridency.”
“For present purposes, our differences are far less important than our unanimity: All nine Justices agree on the outcome of this case. That is the message Americans should take home.”
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, US Supreme Court
Since then, both Maine and Illinois also moved to take Trump off the ballot. Monday’s Supreme Court decision appeared certain to shut down those and other efforts to remove the frontrunner for the GOP nomination from the ballot.