Former United States President Donald Trump is calling on the country's Supreme Court to review Colorado's ruling that bars him from the state's 2024 ballot for his role in the Capitol Hill insurrection.
The development sets up a high-stakes showdown over whether or not a Constitutional provision that prohibits individuals who "engaged in insurrection" will end Trump's political ambition.
Donald Trump Calls on Supreme Court
The Republican businessman appealed a 4-3 ruling in December that was made by Colorado's Supreme Court. It marked the first time in history that the 14th Amendment's Section 3 was used to bar a former president from being a candidate on the ballot.
The state court found that Trump's role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill siege disqualified him under that particular clause. The provision has been used so rarely in the history of the United States that the Supreme Court has never once ruled on it.
The latest announcement comes a day after Trump's legal team filed an appeal against another ruling, which was made by Maine's Secretary of State Shenna Bellows. The latter made a similar decision to Colorado that says the former president is ineligible to appear on the state ballot, as per the Associated Press.
The two rulings on Trump's eligibility are on hold until the appeals against them play out. The former president's critics have already filed dozens of lawsuits seeking his disqualification in several other states.
In Colorado, he lost by 13 percentage points in 2020 and does not need to win the state to gain either the Republican presidential nomination or the presidency. However, the state's ruling has the potential to prompt courts or secretaries in other regions to remove him from their ballots, which could be significant especially if they are must-win states.
Read Also: Donald Trump Appeals Maine's Decision To Remove His Name From 2024 Ballot Over Alleged Insurrection
Removing Trump's Name From State Ballots
None of the lawsuits against the Republican businessman succeeded until the slim majority of the Colorado Supreme Court ruled against him last month. Critics have warned that the decision was an overreach and that the court could not simply declare that the Jan. 6 attack was an "insurrection" without a judicial process.
In their Wednesday filing, Trump's lawyers said that in the system of "government of the people, by the people, [and] for the people," Colorado's ruling is not and cannot be correct. They added that the state's decision, if it remains, will be the first time in history that the judiciary prevents voters from casting ballots for the leading major-party presidential candidate, according to The Guardian.
They then laid out several reasons why the Supreme Court should restore Trump's name on the ballot. They argued that only Congress has the authority to evaluate a dispute over the eligibility of a presidential candidate.
While Trump is calling on the Supreme Court to back him on the matter, he has historically been ruled against by the high court on various matters. These include when he tried to prevent prosecutors from obtaining his financial records and when he tried to stop a congressional committee from accessing White House documents from his administration, said NBC News.
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