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Donald Trump banned from Colorado ballot in historic ruling by state’s Supreme Court (apnews.com)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] joelthelion 20 points 8 months ago (2 children)

What will happen next? I assume the (federal) supreme court will simply shoot it down. But I'd love to hear other opinions!

[–] RegalPotoo 21 points 8 months ago (1 children)

https://learnconlaw.com/78-the-disqualification-clause goes into this in detail - the short answer is that the federal supreme court will probably rule that the amendment doesn't specifically call out the president as a person who can be disqualified and overturn the decision.

There is an argument to be made that the president is a "federal officer" so the ruling does stand, and that the intent was to bar confederates from public office so it would be weird to read the law as disqualifying a person from low level state office but not from the presidency, but it seems unlikely that the court would choose to do that given how partisan it is

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

There is an argument to be made that the president is a “federal officer” so the ruling does stand

What's the argument that he's not a federal officer? Basically everything in the Constitution refers to the office of the presidency, so claiming the president isn't an officer sounds like some bullshit that idiots would come up with. Which makes sense why the republicans are trying that.

[–] RegalPotoo 2 points 8 months ago

The argument that could be made is that in most of the rest of the constitution, anything that involves things the president can or can't do explicitly says "the president", so having an extensive list of positions that could be disqualified that doesn't mention the president by name implies that the president isn't included.

It's not a good argument, and I suspect in saner times it would be pretty clear that the intent is that Trump can't run.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

It's a toss up from what i can tell. Generally speaking it's up to the states to determine how elections are done. And the supreme court doesn't like to tell states how to do it. That's why gendering is up to state laws and decisions.

But Trump's court... Who knows? I'm willing to bet Thomas will be flying in an awful lot of private jets to nice resorts over the next few years.