SCOTUS to consider Trump 14th Amendment ballot disqualification case
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday said it would consider the appeal of former President Donald Trump's disqualification from the Colorado GOP primary ballot.
Moving with relative speed in matter that could prove consequential in the 2024 presidential election, the justices set oral arguments for Thursday, Feb. 8.
Trump's team on Wednesday asked the high court to overturn the Colorado Supreme Court's explosive decision deeming him ineligible to run for the White House in 2024 because, it said, he "engaged in insurrection" on Jan. 6, 2021.
"The issues presented in this petition are of exceptional importance and urgently require this court's prompt resolution," his attorneys wrote.
A Trump campaign spokesperson said it was "confident" the Supreme Court will "affirm the civil rights of President Trump, and the voting rights of all Americans in a ruling that will squash all of the remaining ballot challenge hoaxes once and for all," in a statement to ABC News.
"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," Steven Cheung said.
“Coloradans, and the American people, deserve clarity on whether someone who engaged in insurrection may run for the country's highest office. I urge the Court to prioritize this case and issue a ruling as soon as possible," Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said in a statement.
"We look forward to representing the six courageous Republican and unaffiliated Colorado voters who brought this lawsuit," CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) the group that's representing the plaintiffs, wrote in a post on X.
Colorado was the first state to bar Trump from the ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, followed by Maine.
Trump has also filed an appeal seeking to overturn Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows' decision.
More 14th Amendment-related lawsuits are ongoing across the country, though Trump has so far won challenges to his eligibility in Michigan, California and in more than a dozen suits brought by individuals.
"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 team wrote in its petition to the Supreme Court.
The Colorado Supreme Court made the unprecedented decision on Dec. 19 to keep Trump off of the state's 2024 presidential Republican primary ballot and prohibit the counting of any write-in votes for him, ruling that the former president violated Section 3.
In a ruling that has been appealed over the past two weeks by both Trump's legal team and the Colorado Republican Party, a majority of Colorado's seven justices wrote that the former president "engaged in insurrection," on Jan. 6, 2021, and reversed a lower court's determination that Trump could remain on the ballot because a U.S. president was not an "officer of the United States."
But Trump is facing more than 30 calls for states to bar him from their primary ballots under the 14th Amendment.
Maine became the second state to declare his ineligibility under the disqualification clause on Dec. 28 when Bellows ruled him off the primary ballot, finding Trump "engaged in insurrection" on Jan. 6.
He's also fielded a number of legal victories surrounding 14th Amendment challenges, however.
State Supreme Court judges in Michigan and Minnesota over the past few months have ruled that Trump could be on the ballot in both states, while California's secretary of state certified Trump as a candidate last week and a number of federal cases have been dismissed.
ABC News' Isabella Murray and Alexandra Hutzler contributed to this report.
