The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether former President Donald J. Trump is eligible to run in Colorado’s Republican primary election, placing judges in a central role that could alter the course of this year’s presidential election.
The scope of the court’s decision will likely be broad. It will likely determine not only whether Mr. Trump can run in Colorado’s primary election after the state’s highest court ruled he engaged in insurrection in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, but this will most likely also determine his eligibility to run. general elections and to hold office.
Not since Bush v. Gore, the 2000 decision that handed the presidency to George W. Bush, has the Supreme Court played such a central role in an election for the nation’s highest office.
The case will be argued on February 8 and the court will likely decide quickly. The Colorado Republican Party had urged the justices to rule by March 5, when many states, including Colorado, will hold primaries.
Number of challenges to Mr. Trump’s electability across the country may only have increased pressure on the court to hear the Colorado case, as they underscored the need for a nationwide resolution of the issue.
The case is one of several cases involving or affecting Mr. Trump on the court docket or on the horizon. An appeals court will hear arguments Tuesday on whether he absolute immunity from prosecution, and the losing side is almost certain to appeal. And the court has already declared that it will rule on the scope of a central tax in the federal election interference case in a decision expected by June.
Mr. Trump asked the Supreme Court to intervene after Colorado’s highest court disqualified him from the ballot last month. That ruling is on hold while judges consider the issue.
Jena Griswold, Colorado’s secretary of state, urged the Supreme Court to act quickly.
“The people of Colorado and the American people deserve to know clearly whether someone who engaged in insurrection can run for the highest office in the land,” she said in a statement.
Mr. Trump acknowledged the court’s decision to hear the case at a later date. rally Friday in Sioux Center, Iowa, saying he hoped the justices would interpret the law fairly. “All I want is just; I fought very hard to recruit three very, very good people,” he said, referring to his appointments. He added: “And I just hope they’re fair because, you know, the other team is playing referee.”
The case turns on the meaning of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, which prohibits those who have taken an oath “to support the Constitution of the United States” from holding office if they “se are then engaged in an insurrection. or rebellion against it, or aid or comfort to its enemies.
Congress can lift the ban, the provision states, but only by a two-thirds vote in each house.
Although Section 3 discusses the aftermath of the Civil War, it was written in general terms and, according to most scholars, continues to have strength.
A Colorado trial judge ruled that Mr. Trump engaged in insurrection, but accepted his argument that Section 3 did not apply to him, finding that Mr. Trump did not lend the correct type of oath and that the provision did not apply to the office of the President.
The Colorado Supreme Court upheld the first part of the ruling – that Mr. Trump had engaged in insurrection, including seeking to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election; try to change the vote count; encouraging false lists of competing voters; pressuring the vice president to violate the Constitution; and calling for the march on the Capitol.
But the majority overturned the part of the decision that said Section 3 did not apply to the presidency.
“President Trump asks us to consider,” the majority wrote in an unsigned opinion, “that Section 3 disqualifies any insurrectionist who violates his oath.” except the most powerful and that it bars oath violators from virtually all offices, both state and federal, except the highest in the country. Both results are inconsistent with the plain language and history of Section 3.”
The state Supreme Court addressed several other issues. Congress does not need to act before courts can disqualify candidates, he said. Mr. Trump’s electability is not the kind of political question that escapes the jurisdiction of the courts. The House report of January 6 was duly admitted into evidence. Mr. Trump’s speech that day was not protected by the First Amendment.
The court added that states are authorized under the Constitution to evaluate the qualifications of presidential candidates. “If we were to adopt President Trump’s view,” the majority wrote, “Colorado could not exclude from the ballot even candidates who clearly do not meet the age, residency, and citizenship requirements” of the Constitution.
An election official in Maine last month adopted much of the Colorado Supreme Court’s reasoning by barring Mr. Trump from participating in the primary vote. He appealed that decision to a Maine state court.
In urging the Supreme Court to hear the Colorado case and resolve it quickly, Mr. Trump’s lawyers cited the Maine decision.
“The Colorado Supreme Court’s decision would unconstitutionally disenfranchise millions of voters in Colorado and likely be used as a model to disenfranchise tens of millions of voters nationwide,” the lawyers wrote. “Indeed, the Maine Secretary of State, in an administrative proceeding, has already used the Colorado proceeding as justification to illegally remove President Trump from election in that state.”
The case, Trump vs. Anderson, No. 23-719, presents an unusually large number of complex and overlapping legal issues, and the parties disagree on which ones the court should address. The court’s order granting the review did not specify the issues it agreed to hear. Unless things are clarified later, the briefs and arguments are likely to drag on.
Mr. Trump’s opening brief on the merits is due Jan. 18, and lawyers for the six electors who won their case before the Colorado Supreme Court are expected to respond by Jan. 31.
In their response to Mr. Trump’s petition, the voters’ lawyers said they had counted “at least seven distinct legal and factual questions” raised by Mr. Trump, asking the justices to limit their consideration to five of them.
Questions the justices will face include whether the events culminating in the storming of the Capitol on January 6 were an insurrection and whether Mr. Trump engaged in it. He contested both points in his motion.
“Insurrection, as understood at the time of the adoption of the 14th Amendment, meant taking up arms and waging war against the United States,” the petition states, noting that the amendment was adopted after that “the United States suffered a horrific civil war in which more than 600,000 combatants died and the very survival of the nation was in doubt.
The voters’ brief took the opposite view. “The fact that Trump intentionally mobilized, incited, and encouraged an armed mob to attack the United States Capitol on January 6 satisfies the legal definition of ‘engaging in insurrection,'” the document states.
Judges can decide the case without addressing either issue. They might, for example, argue that this is a political issue not amenable to judicial resolution, that the courts are not free to act unless Congress enacts a law, or that the Article 3 does not apply to the presidency.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued that Section 3 at most barred people subject to it from holding office — not running for office. If elected, the petition says, Congress could lift his disqualification before his term begins.
The voters’ brief said the analysis defied logic. “Because Trump is not qualified to serve as President,” the brief states, “he is not a ‘qualified candidate’ under Colorado’s election code.”
Nicolas Bogel-Burroughs contributed reporting from New York, and Michael Gold from Mason City, Iowa.