Presidential 2024 | The Supreme Court will examine the question of Trump’s ineligibility

(Washington) The United States Supreme Court agreed Friday to decide whether former President Donald Trump could be declared ineligible because of his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat. The highest court in the country thus becomes a player key in the 2024 presidential campaign.

The justices recognized the need to make a decision quickly, as voters will soon begin casting ballots in presidential primaries across the country. The court agreed to take up a Colorado case stemming from Mr. Trump’s role in the events that culminated in the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The oral arguments will take place in early February.

The highest American court will examine for the first time the meaning and scope of an article of 14^e amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits a person who has “taken part in an insurrection or rebellion” from holding public office. The amendment was adopted in 1868, following the Civil War. It has been used so rarely that the highest court in the land has never had a chance to interpret it.

The Colorado Supreme Court, by a vote of four to three, ruled last month that Mr. Trump should not run in the Republican primary election. It was the first time that the 14^e amendment was used to exclude a candidate for the country’s presidency from the ballot.

Mr. Trump, for his part, appealed to the Maine court a decision by the Democratic Secretary of State, Shenna Bellows, according to which he was not eligible to be elected in that state because of his role in the assault on Capitol. The decisions of the Colorado Supreme Court and the Maine Secretary of State are stayed until the appeals are heard.

Three of the Supreme Court’s nine justices were appointed by Mr. Trump, although they have repeatedly ruled against him in lawsuits related to the 2020 election, as well as his efforts to prevent documents related to January 6 and its tax returns are transmitted to congressional committees.

On the other hand, Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh participated in the majority of the Supreme Court’s conservative decisions, which overturned the fifty-year-old constitutional right to abortion, expanded gun rights and overturned affirmative action in college admissions.

Some Democratic lawmakers have called on another conservative judge, Clarence Thomas, to withdraw from the case because of his wife’s support for Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the presidential election, which he lost to the Democrat Joe Biden. It’s unlikely, however, that Justice Thomas will agree: He has recused himself from only one other case related to the 2020 election, involving former jurist John Eastman, and so far, those trying to disqualify M Trump did not ask him to recuse himself.

The two-sentence provision of Article 3 of 14^e Amendment states that anyone who has sworn an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States and then “takes part in insurrection or rebellion” against it is no longer eligible for state or federal office.

Congress in 1872 passed an amnesty for most former Confederates covered by the measure, then the provision fell into disuse until dozens of lawsuits were filed to prevent Mr. Trump from participating in the election this year. Only the challenge in Colorado was successful.

Mr. Trump had asked the Supreme Court to invalidate this Colorado decision without even hearing oral arguments. “The Colorado Supreme Court’s decision would unconstitutionally disenfranchise millions of Colorado voters and likely be used as a model to disenfranchise tens of millions of voters nationwide,” Mr. Trump’s lawyers wrote.

In particular, they argue that the events of January 6 do not constitute an insurrection — and even if they did, they write, Mr. Trump himself would not have engaged in it. They also argue that the Constitution’s insurrection section does not apply to the president and that it is Congress that must act, not individual states.