Supreme Court Agrees to Rule on Trump’s Colorado Primary Eligibility

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Friday to take up the question of whether former President Donald Trump can run in the Colorado Republican primary, setting up an extraordinary legal battle in advance of the upcoming GOP primaries.

The decision came after multiple state courts and local officials offered dueling interpretations of whether the “insurrection clause” of the 14th Amendment should bar Trump from holding office. At least 19 states have pending cases on the issue, increasing pressure on the Supreme Court to rule.

Trump, campaigning in Iowa ahead of the GOP caucus on January 15, had this to say about the decision: “All I want is fair; I fought really hard to get three very, very good people in,” he said on Friday, referring to Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch, all of whom he appointed during his first term. “And I just hope that they’re going to be fair because, you know, the other side plays the ref.”

The Court’s order indicated that the case, Trump v. Andersen, will review a Colorado ruling from December, in which the state’s Supreme Court said that Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election on January 6, 2021 amounted to an insurrection and therefore should disqualify him from the primary ballot. Trump’s legal team appealed the Colorado decision on Wednesday. 

The timeline for the case is swift: Trump’s lawyers’ opening brief is due on January 18, and oral arguments will be heard on February 8. The Court is expected to rule before Super Tuesday on March 5, when voters in 16 states—including Colorado—will head to the polls.

Colorado’s secretary of state, Jena Griswold, encouraged the Court to move quickly. “Coloradans, and the American people, deserve clarity on whether someone who engaged in insurrection may run for the country’s highest office,” she said in a statement.

The questions put in front of the justices next month will be broad, including whether Trump’s actions before and during January 6 amount to an attempted insurrection. On Thursday, a group of House Democrats sent a letter to Justice Clarence Thomas urging him to recuse himself from the case, citing his wife, Ginni Thomas’s role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election.

The Court’s decision will be the most hotly contested and consequential decision related to a presidential election since Bush v. Gore in 2000—though in that case, neither candidate had appointed one-third of the Court’s bench, cementing a conservative super-majority, nor was the court ruling on the question of whether one candidate had tried to overturn a previous election.

The ruling will come as President Joe Biden works to make Trump’s attempt to subvert democracy on January 6 central to his re-election bid, while recent polling shows that Republicans have become even more sympathetic to Capitol rioters and more likely to absolve Trump of responsibility than they were three years ago.

“We welcome a fair hearing at the Supreme Court to argue against the bad-faith, election-interfering, voter-suppressing, Democrat-backed and Biden-led, 14th Amendment abusing decision to remove President Trump’s name from the 2024 ballot in the state of Colorado,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement. 

“I just hope we get fair treatment,” Trump told several hundred supporters in Sioux Center on Friday. “Because if we don’t, our country’s in big, big trouble. Does everybody understand what I’m saying?”