URGENT: The Supreme Court rules 9-0 that states must allow Donald Trump on the presidential ballot

This was the right decision, for the right reason; and the fact it was unanimous is a hopeful sign.

Lawfare has limits.

The Supreme Court just ruled unanimously, 9-0, that Americans must be allowed to decide for themselves whether Donald Trump should return to office in 2025.

The Court struck down a Colorado Supreme Court ruling claiming that because Trump had engaged in “insurrection” on Jan. 6, 2021, he would not be allowed on the Colorado presidential ballot.

The court set aside the question of whether Jan. 6 was an insurrection (by any reasonable standard, it was not) and simply ruled that states cannot choose whether to disqualify candidates for federal office as insurrectionists. The crucial sentence in the opinion:

We conclude that States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office. But States have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 [which prevents “insurrectionists” from holding office] with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency.

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(News, fast!)

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As the court pointed out, allowing individual states to disqualify candidates they didn’t like on the nebulous grounds of “insurrection” would lead to chaos. Republican-leaning states might bar Democrats in the same way that Colorado had disqualified Trump.

“A single candidate [might] be declared ineligible in some States, but not others, based on the same conduct (and perhaps even the same factual record),” the justices wrote. “Nothing in the Constitution requires that we endure such chaos.”

The three most liberal justices - Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson - issued their own opinion, arguing that the majority had gone too far in its ruling but still supporting Trump’s right to remain on the ballot. (Amy Coney Barrett also issued her own opinion.)

The unanimous decision stands as a rebuke to the leftist lawyers, including some supposedly serious law professors, who have argued increasingly loudly over the last year in favor of disqualifying Trump. They may have convinced themselves, and each other, but the Supreme Court correctly ruled that, in the absence of Congressional action against him, voters deserve the last word.

Whew.