The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Donald Trump can remain on the ballot in Colorado, overturning a decision from the state’s Supreme Court. The justices ruled that the Constitution makes Congress, not the states, responsible for enforcing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment against federal officeholders and candidates. 

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In December, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that the former president was disqualified from a second term because he engaged in insurrection and therefore was barred under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. The court ordered the Colorado secretary of state to keep him off the 2024 presidential primary ballot. 

In their reversal, the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court wrote, “…the text of the Fourteenth Amendment, on its face, does not affirmatively delegate such a power to the States. The terms of the Amendment speak only to enforcement by Congress, which enjoys power to enforce the Amendment through legislation…”

The decision explains that power is given to Congress through Section 5 of the 14th Amendment.

“The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article,” the section states.

This decision was per curiam, which means it does not have any specific justice listed as the author and it was released in the name of the court. However, Justices Barrett, Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson wrote concurring opinions. 

Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson wrote that the per curiam decision went too far and didn’t stick to the single question that the court was originally asked to answer: Did the Colorado Supreme Court err in ordering President Trump be excluded from the 2024 presidential primary ballot?

“Although federal enforcement of Section 3 is in no way at issue, the majority announces novel rules for how that enforcement must operate,” the court’s three liberal justices wrote in their concurring opinion. “It reaches out to decide Section 3 questions not before us, and to foreclose future efforts to disqualify a Presidential candidate under that provision.”

“The majority announces that a disqualification for insurrection can occur only when Congress enacts a particular kind of legislation pursuant to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment,” the concurring opinion added. “In doing so, the majority shuts the door on other potential means of federal enforcement.”

This decision was released one day ahead of the Colorado Republican primary, which takes place on Super Tuesday, March 5.

There are other challenges to Trump’s ballot eligibility which could now be resolved quicker due to the Supreme Court’s decision.

The Maine secretary of state wrote a decision disqualifying Trump from the presidency, which was initially put on hold. A state court later ordered a revisit after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. Anderson. Courts in Michigan and Minnesota declined to keep Trump off the primary ballot but left the door open to challenges in the general election.