The U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling Monday unanimously concluding that states cannot disqualify a candidate for federal office from appearing on a ballot based on the Constitution’s 14th Amendment’s Section 3 disqualification clause.
“In this case, the Court must decide whether Colorado may keep a presidential candidate off the ballot on the ground that he is an oathbreaking insurrectionist and thus disqualified from holding federal office under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment,” the concurrence by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson states. “Allowing Colorado to do so would, we agree, create a chaotic state-by-state patchwork, at odds with our Nation’s federalism principles. That is enough to resolve this case.”
States “may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office,” the ruling states. Italics not added.
The Justices in their concurrence disagreed with the other justices’ going beyond the patchwork argument.
“Although only an individual state’s action is at issue here, the majority opines on which federal actors can enforce Section 3, and how they must do so,” the Justices state.
The other justices said that Congress has to enact legislation for a federal candidate’s disqualification for insurrection.
“In doing so, the majority shuts the door on other potential means of federal enforcement,” the Justices state. “We cannot join an opinion that decides momentous and difficult issues unnecessarily, and we therefore concur only in the judgment.”