Attorneys general from 27 states have filed an amicus briefing to support former President Donald Trump and his appeal to the United States Supreme Court over the Colorado Supreme Court decision to ban Trump from the state’s primary and general election ballot this year.
The Republican attorneys general filed a 22-page “friend of the court” brief Saturday, in which the more than two dozen top state legal officers urged the Supreme Court to strike down a Colorado Supreme Court decision last December that barred the former president from the ballot.
The attorneys general argue that barring Trump from the ballot is too unusual and abrupt an interference in the election and oversteps the constitutional roles of the rest of the government. “Most obviously, it casts confusion into an election cycle that is just weeks away. Beyond that, it upsets the respective roles of the Congress, the States, and the courts,” the filing says.
The Supreme Court has set the filing deadline for similar briefs for later this month and will hear oral arguments for Trump’s appeal and Colorado’s response on Feb. 8.
Election activists in at least 31 states have contested Trump’s eligibility for the 2024 presidential ballots on some basis that the former president engaged in insurrection and rebellion against the United States. Under this theory Donald Trump influenced the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill protests by his supporters to attempt to prevent the certification of the 2020 election results.
If this were the case, Trump’s challengers argue that he is not eligible to hold the office of presidency in the United States under Section Three of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. But it is not entirely clear that Trump engaged in insurrection or rebellion. No court of law has convicted Trump of these allegations under criminal courtroom standards of evidence.
The relevant clause states: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President… shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against [the United States].” It does not however, clearly state that no such person shall be president, but elector of the president, which was why a lower Colorado court threw out the case.
