The decision was unanimous that states can’t decide this. 4 of them think the prohibition is self-executing, which would have kept Trump off anyway but nationwide
Self executing what does that even mean in this context?
“Oh hey Trump I know you were on the ballot but it magically disappeared because the universe knows what you did last summer winter. People don’t have to enforce the law, some laws just magically enforce themselves!”
Yeah and we can see how that “works.” It takes a person to enforce it, that’s what happened, and then the SCOTUS said “nah not like that, it needs to be magic.”
I should clarify: a few of them aren’t in the right’s pocket. Arguably they are too biased the other way, but the court had traditionally been balanced fairly well most of the time. Not so for the last decade or more.
I get that the argument presented to them wasn’t the best, and that’s where the unanimity came from. But let’s face it, the court has been a joke for a while now. And for whatever reason, I am not at all surprised that they sided with Trump.
Edit: also, to say it was a unanimous decision isn’t exactly accurate. It was more complicated than that.
The other way of looking at this is that conservative States can’t boot Biden from the ballot either.
And you could bet your ass that if the ruling went the other way Biden would be off the ballot in every red state too. And that would be a much bigger mess than Trump being on all the ballots.
Except justifying Biden as having committed insurrection is a hell of a lot harder than Trump, who was found to have committed insurrection as a matter of fact.
It protects Biden, sure, but from an extremely remote possibility, instead of an imminent one.
In order to legally classify Biden as an insurrectionist, they’d have to come up with hare-brained legal gymnastics and then they’d need, like, a majority in the supreme court to rubber-stamp their…
Eh, for what it’s worth, SCOTUS has said it’s Congress’s job to determine that, because the self-executing portion of the Constitution apparently needs an executor. 🙃
They’ve been setting that up for weeks, though. They started calling the migrant crisis in the Southern border an “invasion”. You can bet that if the Court held up the Colorado ruling, we would have a ruling in short order in Texas (possibly AZ too) that Biden was ineligible for directly causing an invasion. No matter how incorrect that take is.
It’s not about that. They would just make something up and say that’s why they’re doing it. “Something something Hunter Biden” therefore Biden is off the ballot.
Not exactly, liberal justices discented in specifics of who could be expected to make a determination. Agreed it can’t be a single state, disagreed on federal courts, other bodies making a determination. Conservative justices decided it would be only congress.
In any case, they all seemed to find it can’t be the states based more on consequences than law and unanimous decisions don’t reduce the slide to facism any more than a split decision will.
Section 5 says Congress can enforce, not quite the same thing. There’s actually precedent that you don’t need an act of Congress for section 3 to apply, and nothing in text that says you need it.
If you look at the non-confederate who got nipped by the 14th, the process was he got elected as a representative, and they then held a floor vote that determined he was ineligible due to an espionage act conviction.
Yes, he was already ineligible the election happened before the conviction, but that was the process for unseating him.
I don’t know how that would apply to a POTUS (probably take both houses of congress,).
I mean, it doesn’t really say that but it is now the law of the land anyway.
In my lay person opinion, they wrote the decision to get the result they wanted.
Which during questioning seemed to be: 1)they don’t want the states to do it because of the potential consequences 2)they don’t want to decide each case themselves (the SC) 3) they don’t want the Federal Court circuits to decide since it would filter up to the SC (see 2)
So according to the majority the only body left to decide is congress. Which of course has the consequence of ensuring it will never actually be done.
So if you want to do an insurrection in the US, just make sure to have a personality cult built up around you and enough members of Congress living in fear of you and your violent supporters to stop congress ever enacting consequences for your failed attempts.
Like I’ve said for months. The means of enforcement for sec 3 is early defined in section 5. But all those that called me a bot or paid by Russia thought they knew netter
It’s as simple as: “was he sentenced of insurrection by a court?” No. Then he can’t be kicked off the ballot. Should he be sentenced of insurrection? Another matter altogether (yes, he probably should). Besides, constitutionally there’s nothing that blocks him from running for President even if condemned if I’m not mistaken
The law, specifically the Constitution, states that no person shall be allowed to hold office who has participated in insurrection. Trump was found to have committed insurrection as a matter of fact by the Colorado Supreme Court.
So the law is not in his favor, and it’s yet another example of SCOTUS carving out exceptions for Conservatives using tortured logic. Our ancestors who fought in the Civil War would be ashamed.
Yeah he was already found to have participated in insurrection by Colorado’s courts as a finding of fact. If the standard was that it has to be proven in court they’ve already done that.
Which is an insane position to take given how highly partisan congress is, to the point that denying the insurrection even took place is a common everyday occurrence in Trumps party.
So we’ve learned that all it takes to do an insurrection is to have a party that supports it with just enough power to prevent congress acting.
It is a reasonable decision given what the law says, which is all that should matter to a court. No goddamn “spirit of the law” should be invoked, otherwise you enter the realm of the arbitrary. Now, the issue is that the system that should ensure perpetual creative destruction in order to bring out the best and most willing individuals to power has failed to do so, which is the problem we should be focusing on, instead of trying to override reasonable laws in order to prevent this or that lunatic from getting this or that seat
It is a reasonable decision given what the law says, which is all that should matter to a court. No goddamn “spirit of the law” should be invoked, otherwise you enter the realm of the arbitrary.
This is the same court that abandoned standing entirely so they could rule in favor of a bigoted website designer. That ship has sailed.
During his impeachment trials, the GOP argued that impeachments are not a criminal proceeding, they are a political one- so they acquitted on politics saying that this is for the courts to decide. Now that the matter is in the courts, they argue it’s for congress only, not the courts.
With a justice system like this one, who needs torches and pitchforks? /s
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