Colorado urges swift U.S. Supreme Court action in Trump ballot case

Chase Woodruff

(Colorado Newsline) Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold on Tuesday became the latest party in a landmark case seeking to block former President Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 ballot to formally request a prompt review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Griswold’s brief, submitted on her behalf by the office of Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, asks the nation’s highest court to grant a so-called writ of certiorari, a formal order issued by the Supreme Court when it agrees to take up a case.

In a historic ruling issued Dec. 19, the Colorado Supreme Court ordered Griswold not to place Trump on the ballot, siding with plaintiffs who argued that he is ineligible for the office of president under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Section 3 of the Amendment, ratified in the wake of the Civil War, prohibits a person who “engaged in insurrection” after taking an oath to support the Constitution from holding office again.

“I urge the Supreme Court to act swiftly in providing a resolution to this case,” Griswold, a Democrat, wrote in an X post Wednesday.

Though an outspoken critic of Trump, Griswold was named as the defendant in the lawsuit, which was filed in September by six Colorado Republican and unaffiliated voters, backed by the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. The plaintiffs argued that it would be a “wrongful act” for Griswold to certify Trump’s candidacy in the state’s 2024 Republican presidential primary, since Colorado’s election code requires officials to ensure that only eligible candidates appear on the ballot.

Griswold declined throughout court proceedings late last year to take a formal position on the ballot issue, inviting the courts to weigh in first. But she has since said the Colorado Supreme Court “got it right” in ruling that Trump is disqualified.

The court stayed its decision pending a likely U.S. Supreme Court appeal, meaning that Trump’s name will still appear on GOP primary ballots if the court agrees to review the case before the ballot certification deadline on Friday, Griswold has said.

The Colorado Republican Party, granted so-called intervenor status during state court proceedings, on Dec. 28 became the first to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. A separate appeal by Trump’s attorneys is widely expected but had not yet been filed as of midday Wednesday, according to the U.S. Supreme Court’s docket.

In their filing, attorneys for Griswold echoed the position taken by the plaintiffs in a brief filed earlier Tuesday, asking the court to weigh in on two key questions raised by the case — whether Section 3 of the 14th Amendment applies to the president, and whether it can be enforced by a state without congressional action — but decline to review a third question presented by the Colorado Republican Party, asking whether denying it the ability to nominate “the candidate of its choice” in an election violates the First Amendment.

Citing previous Supreme Court rulings, Griswold’s brief called the Colorado GOP’s argument “squarely contrary to this Court’s precedent.”

“To the extent the Court is inclined to revisit any of that precedent, this case presents a poor vehicle for doing so,” Griswold’s attorneys wrote.

“This case presents several novel and weighty questions of constitutional interpretation that merit this Court’s attention,” the brief continued. “Whether the Republican Party has a constitutional right to place an ineligible candidate on Colorado’s ballot is not one of them.”