DENVER — Former President Donald Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to overturn a ruling barring him from the Colorado ballot, setting up a high-stakes showdown over whether a constitutional provision prohibiting those who “engaged in insurrection” will end his political career.
Trump appealed a 4-3 ruling in December by the Colorado Supreme Court that marked the first time in history Section 3 of the 14th Amendment was used to bar a presidential contender from the ballot. The court found Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol disqualified him under the clause.
The provision has been used so sparingly in American history that the U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled on it.
Wednesday’s development came a day after Trump’s legal team filed an appeal against a ruling by Maine’s Democratic Secretary of State, Shenna Bellows, that Trump was ineligible to appear on that state’s ballot over his role in the Capitol attack.
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Both the Colorado Supreme Court and the Maine secretary of state’s rulings are on hold until the appeals play out.
Former President Donald Trump speaks Dec. 16 at a campaign rally in Durham, N.H.
Trump’s critics have filed dozens of lawsuits seeking to disqualify him in multiple states. He lost Colorado by 13 percentage points in 2020 and does not need to win the state, but the Colorado ruling has the potential to prompt courts or secretaries of state to remove him from the ballot in other, must-win states.
None succeeded until a majority of Colorado’s seven justices — all appointed by Democratic governors — ruled last month against Trump. Critics warned that it was an overreach and that the court could not simply declare that the Jan. 6 attack was an “insurrection” without a judicial process.
“The Colorado Supreme Court decision would unconstitutionally disenfranchise millions of voters in Colorado and likely be used as a template to disenfranchise tens of millions of voters nationwide,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in their appeal to the nation’s highest court.
Trump’s new appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court also follows one from Colorado’s Republican Party. Legal observers expect the high court will take the case because it concerns unsettled constitutional issues that go to the heart of the way the country is governed.
Audience members react as former President Donald Trump speaks during a Dec. 19 rally in Waterloo, Iowa.
All the parties to the case have urged the court to move quickly. Trump’s lawyers asked the court Wednesday to overturn the ruling without even hearing oral arguments. The lawyers representing the Colorado plaintiffs have urged oral arguments but also seek a vastly accelerated schedule, calling for a resolution by next month. Colorado’s primary is March 5.
Sean Grimsley, an attorney for the plaintiffs seeking to disqualify Trump in Colorado, said late last month on a legal podcast called “Law, disrupted” that he hopes the nation’s highest court hurries once it accepts the case, as he expects it will.
“We have a primary coming up on Super Tuesday and we need to know the answer,” Grimsley said.
The Colorado high court upheld a finding by a district court judge that Jan. 6 was an “insurrection” incited by Trump. It agreed with the petitioners, six Republican and unaffiliated Colorado voters whose lawsuit was funded by a Washington-based liberal group, that Trump clearly violated the provision.
Because of that, the court ruled he is disqualified just as plainly as if he failed to meet the Constitution’s minimum age requirement for the presidency of 35 years.
Former President Donald Trump speaks during a Dec. 19 rally in Waterloo, Iowa.
In doing so, the state high court reversed a ruling by the lower court judge that said it wasn’t clear that Section 3 was meant to apply to the president. That’s one of many issues the nation’s highest court would consider.
Additional ones include whether states such as Colorado can determine who is covered by Section 3, whether congressional action is needed to create a process to bar people from office, whether Jan. 6 met the legal definition of insurrection and whether Trump was simply engaging in First Amendment activity that day or is responsible for the violent attack, which was intended to halt certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.
Trump held a rally before the Capitol attack, telling his supporters that “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
Six of the U.S. Supreme Court’s nine justices were appointed by Republicans, and three by Trump himself.
The Colorado ruling cited a prior decision by Neil Gorsuch, one of Trump’s appointees to the high court, when he was a federal judge in Colorado. That ruling determined that the state had a legitimate interest in removing from the presidential ballot a naturalized U.S. citizen who was ineligible for the office because he was born in Guyana.
Section 3, however, has barely been used since the years after the Civil War, when it kept defeated Confederates from returning to their former government positions.
The two-sentence clause says anyone who swore an oath to “support” the Constitution and then engaged in insurrection cannot hold office unless a two-thirds vote of Congress allows it.
A look at the 19 people charged in the Georgia indictment connected to Trump's election scheme
Key people in the Georgia election fraud case
Four of the 18 people charged alongside former President Donald Trump with participating in an illegal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia have now negotiated deals with prosecutors, pleading guilty to reduced charges in exchange for their truthful testimony in future trials.
Lawyer Jenna Ellis on Tuesday became the latest to turn against Trump, pleading guilty to a single felony charge in exchange for a sentence of probation rather than prison time. Fellow attorneys Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro reached similar deals last week, just as their trial in the case was supposed to start because they had invoked their rights to a speedy trial. Bail bondsman Scott Graham Hall last month was the first to plead guilty.
Trump and the others charged in the case have pleaded not guilty.
The sweeping indictment, brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, pictured, in August, capped an investigation that had lasted more than two years and marked the fourth criminal case brought against the former president. Its 41 counts include racketeering, violating the oath of a public officer, forgery, false statements and other offenses.
Here’s a look at the 19 people charged:
Donald Trump
Then-President Trump fixated on Georgia after the 2020 general election, refusing to accept his narrow loss in the state and making unfounded assertions of widespread election fraud there. He also called top state officials, including Gov. Brian Kemp, to urge them to find a way to reverse his loss in the state. In a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Trump suggested the state’s top elections official could help “find” the votes needed for him to win the state. Willis opened the investigation into possible illegal attempts to influence the election shortly after a recording of that call was made public.
Rudy Giuliani
During several legislative hearings at the Georgia Capitol in December 2020, the former New York mayor and Trump attorney promoted unsupported allegations of widespread election fraud in Georgia. Prosecutors have said Giuliani was also involved in a plan to have 16 Georgia Republicans serve as fake electors, falsely swearing that Trump had won the 2020 presidential election and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors.
John Eastman
Eastman, one of Trump’s lawyers and a former dean of Chapman University's law school in Southern California, was deeply involved in some of his efforts to remain in power after the 2020 election. He wrote a memo arguing that Trump could remain in power if then-Vice President Mike Pence overturned the results of the electoral certification during a joint session of Congress. That plan included putting in place a slate of “alternate” electors in seven battleground states, including Georgia, who would falsely certify that Trump had won their states.
Mark Meadows
Trump’s chief of staff visited Cobb County, in the Atlanta suburbs, while state investigators were conducting an audit of the signatures on absentee ballot envelopes in December 2020. Meadows obtained the phone number of the chief investigator for the secretary of state’s office, Frances Watson, and passed it along to Trump, who called her. He also participated in the Jan. 2, 2021, phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
Sidney Powell
A lawyer and staunch Trump ally, Powell was present for a now-infamous December 2020 meeting at the White House where participants hatched far-fetched schemes. She also was part of a group that met at the South Carolina home of conservative attorney Lin Wood in November 2020 “for the purpose of exploring options to influence the results of the November 2020 elections in Georgia and elsewhere,” prosecutors said. Additionally, prosecutors alleged Powell was involved in arranging for a computer forensics team to travel to rural Coffee County, about 200 miles southeast of Atlanta, to copy data and software from elections equipment there in January 2021.
Kenneth Chesebro
Prosecutors have said Chesebro, an attorney, worked with Republicans in numerous swing states Trump lost, including Georgia, in the weeks after the November 2020 election at the direction of Trump’s campaign. Chesebro worked on the coordination and execution of a plan to have 16 Georgia Republicans sign a certificate declaring falsely that Trump won and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors.
Jeffrey Clark
A U.S. Justice Department official who championed Trump’s false claims of election fraud, Clark presented colleagues with a draft letter pushing Georgia officials to convene a special legislative session on the election results, according to testimony before the U.S. House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Clark wanted the letter sent, but Justice Department superiors refused.
Jenna Ellis
The lawyer appeared with Giuliani at a Dec. 3, 2020, hearing hosted by state Republican lawmakers at the Georgia Capitol during which false allegations of election fraud were made. Ellis also wrote at least two legal memos to Trump and his attorneys advising that Pence should “disregard certified electoral college votes from Georgia and other purportedly ‘contested’ states” when Congress met to certify the election results on Jan. 6, 2021, prosecutors said.
Ray Smith
A Georgia-based lawyer, Smith was involved in multiple lawsuits challenging the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. He also gathered witnesses to provide testimony before Georgia legislative subcommittee hearings held in December 2020 on alleged issues with the state’s election.
Robert Cheeley
A Georgia lawyer, Cheeley presented video clips to legislators of election workers at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta and alleged the workers were counting votes twice or sometimes three times. He spoke to the lawmakers after Giuliani.
Michael Roman
A former White House aide who served as the director of Trump’s election day operations, Roman was involved in efforts to put forth a set of fake electors after the 2020 election.
David Shafer
The chairman of the Georgia GOP, Shafer was one of 16 state Republicans who met at the state Capitol on Dec. 14, 2020, to sign a certificate declaring falsely that Trump had won and also declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors. He also joined Trump in a lawsuit challenging the certification of the 2020 election in Georgia.
Shawn Still
He was one of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate falsely stating that Trump had won the state and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors. Still was the finance chairman for the state GOP in 2020 and served as a Georgia delegate to the Republican National Convention that year. He was elected to the Georgia state Senate in November 2022 and represents a district in Atlanta’s suburbs.
Stephen Cliffgard Lee
Prosecutors say Cliffgard Lee, a pastor, worked with others to try to pressure Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman and her daughter after Trump and his allies falsely accused them of pulling fraudulent ballots from a suitcase during the vote count. Lee allegedly knocked on Freeman’s door, frightening her and causing her to call 911 three times, prosecutors said in a court filing last year.
Harrison William Prescott Floyd
Also known as Willie Lewis Floyd III, he served as director of Black Voices for Trump, and is accused of recruiting Lee to arrange a meeting with Freeman and Chicago-based publicist Trevian Kutti.
Trevian C. Kutti
Prosecutors allege Kutti, a publicist, claimed to have high-level law enforcement connections. They say Freeman met with Kutti at a police precinct, where she brought Floyd into the conversation on a speakerphone. Prosecutors say Kutti presented herself as someone who could help Freeman but then pressured her to falsely confess to election fraud.
Cathy Latham
Latham was one of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate falsely stating that Trump had won the state and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors. She was also chair of the Coffee County Republican Party. She was at the county elections office for much of the day on Jan. 7, 2021, and welcomed a computer forensics team that arrived to copy software and data from the county’s election equipment in what the secretary of state’s office has said was “unauthorized access” to the machines.
Scott Graham Hall
An Atlanta-area bail bondsman, Hall was allegedly involved in commandeering voting information that was the property of Dominion Voting Systems from Coffee County, a small south Georgia jurisdiction. Also charged in the scheme were Powell, Latham and former county elections supervisor Misty Hampton.
Misty Hampton
She was the elections director in Coffee County. Hampton was present in the county elections office on Jan. 7, 2021, when a computer forensics team copied software and data from the county’s election equipment. She also allowed two other men who had been active in efforts to question the 2020 election results to access the elections office later that month and to spend hours inside with the equipment.
