OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Constitutional law professor and expert Jonathan Turley expressed shock and dismay at the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to boot former President Donald Trump off the 2024 ballot under a 14th Amendment provision regarding “insurrection.”
Late Monday afternoon, the state’s highest court determined that Trump is an ineligible presidential candidate because of the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban.” The verdict was 4–3.
The decision will remain on hold until January 4th when an appeal is considered. The nation hopes that the US Supreme Court will hear the case and reach a final decision by then, CNN reported.
The landmark decision will shake up the presidential race of 2024, even though it only applies to Colorado. Officials in Colorado’s election office have stated that a resolution is required by January 5, the statutory deadline for determining the Republican primary contenders.
Post-Civil War ratification of the 14th Amendment prohibits “engaged in insurrection” from holding public office for officials who pledge allegiance to the Constitution. Aside from its ambiguous language and lack of specific reference to the presidency, this provision has seen only two applications since 1919.
In an appearance on Fox News afterward, Turley told host Laura Ingraham he vehemently disagreed with the ruling and the reasoning behind it while warning about its consequences.
“It is a strikingly anti-democratic holding, in my view,” Turley said. “The court literally faced a series of interpretive barriers to get to where it ended up. It adopted the most sweeping, broadest possible interpretation to get over every one of those hurdles. So throughout this opinion, it had to adopt interpretations that could encompass a wide array of statements.”
“They used what’s called true threat precedent to show that you can view what Trump said as encouraging an insurrection by looking at stuff that he said at other times. And that, of course, allowed them to reach this conclusion. In my view, the court is dead wrong,” he added, before adding that similar theories had already been rejected by other Democrat-appointed judges.
“I think the opinion is really chilling, and I think that the Supreme Court will make fast work of this theory; I hope it does,” Turley said.
Ingraham, who is an attorney herself, responded: “And there have been other rulings in other state supreme courts, correct? Or federal courts that have come to the opposite conclusion here. So this is an outlier, which, again, because of what’s at stake, it’s going to have to be expedited to the court, the Supreme Court.”
“Yeah, when you read this opinion, the one thing that keeps on recurring in your mind is: ‘Where is the limiting principle here?’” Turley offered. “What would not satisfy this test? At each one of these barriers, the court could have adopted a fairly moderate or more narrow approach. But it didn’t. And so, on every one of these issues, it really took out all the fail-safes and went to the broadest possible meaning.
“Well, that means that states could engage in a tit-for-tat type of series of decisions. You know, you could have red states blocking Biden on some ballots and blue states blocking Trump,” he predicted. “And the way this is viewed by the public is really quite horrific. You know, they view President Biden on the ropes, and the ref just called the match.”
WATCH:
Democratic governors of Colorado appointed all seven justices to the state’s highest court. To remain on the bench, six of the seven judges went on to win statewide retention elections. The seventh has not yet been put to the vote since she was appointed in 2021.
Trump has condemned the 14th Amendment litigation as an abuse of the judicial process and denies any wrongdoing about January 6. He has entered a not-guilty plea to federal and state charges related to his efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 election.
