Colorado's highest court on Tuesday declared former President Donald Trump ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution's insurrection clause and removed him from the state's presidential primary ballot.

The landmark ruling sets up a likely showdown in the nation's highest court to decide whether the front-runner for the GOP nomination can remain in the race.

What You Need To Know

  • The Colorado Supreme Court is removing former President Donald Trump from the state's primary ballot, saying he is ineligible to be president after his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol

  • The ruling Tuesday marks the first time in history that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate

  • The former president's reelection campaign said it would appeal the decision and baselessly accused the Colorado Supreme Court of backing a "scheme to interfere in an election"

  • The provision forbids those who "engaged in insurrection" from holding office and was used mainly after the Civil War to keep former Confederates out of government

The decision from the Colorado Supreme Court, whose justices were all appointed by Democratic governors, marks the first time in history that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate.

"A majority of the court holds that Trump is disqualified from holding the office of president under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment," the court wrote in its 4-3 decision.

The text of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment reads: "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."

It also states that a two-thirds vote in the House and Senate can remove the disqualification.

The justices wrote in theirl ruling that Trump's "direct and express efforts, over several months, exhorting his supporters to march to the Capitol to prevent what he falsely characterized as an alleged fraud on the people of this country were indisputably overt and voluntary."

"Moreover, the evidence amply showed that President Trump undertook all these actions to aid and further a common unlawful purpose that he himself conceived and set in motion: prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election and stop the peaceful transfer of power," they added.

Colorado's highest court overturned a ruling from a district court judge who found that Trump incited an insurrection for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, but said he could not be barred from the ballot because it was unclear that the provision was intended to cover the presidency. The lawsuit was filed by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a left-leaning government watchdog group, on behalf of a group of Republican and independent voters.

"The court’s decision today affirms what our clients alleged in this lawsuit: that Donald Trump is an insurrectionist who disqualified himself from office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment based on his role in the January 6th attack on the Capitol," CREW president Noah Bookbinder said in a statement. "It is not only historic and justified, but is necessary to protect the future of democracy in our country."

"Our Constitution clearly states that those who violate their oath by attacking our democracy are barred from serving in government," he added.

"My fellow plaintiffs and I brought this case to continue to protect the right to free and fair elections enshrined in our Constitution and to ensure Colorado Republican primary voters are only voting for eligible candidates," said Norma Anderson, a petitioner in the case and the former GOP majority leader of Colorado's Senate and House. "Today’s win does just that."

“We do not reach these conclusions lightly,” Tuesday's majority opinion reads. “We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us."

"We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach," the opinion continues.

Chief Justice Brian Boatright, one of the three judges who dissented, wrote in his opinion that disqualifying Trump was not the correct course of action "in the absence of an insurrection-related conviction."

The court stayed its decision until Jan. 4, or until the high court rules on the case.

The former president's reelection campaign said it would appeal the decision and baselessly accused the Colorado Supreme Court of backing a "scheme to interfere in an election" on behalf of incumbent President Joe Biden.

"The Colorado Supreme Court issued a completely flawed decision tonight and we will swiftly file an appeal to the United States Supreme Court and a concurrent request for a stay of this deeply undemocratic decision," said Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung in a statement. "We have full confidence that the U.S. Supreme Court will quickly rule in our favor and finally put an end to these unAmerican lawsuits."

Trump's attorneys had previously pledged to appeal any disqualification immediately to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has the final say about constitutional matters.

Three of Trump’s ostensible rivals for the GOP presidential nomination -- Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy -- all voiced disagreement with the court’s opinion on Tuesday. Ramaswamy pledged to withdraw from the Colorado GOP ballot amid Trump's removal, and urged Christie, DeSantis and Nikki Haley to do the same.

The former president stuck to his usual rally script at an event in Waterloo, Iowa, on Tuesday. He didn’t mention the Colorado decision explicitly, but a boilerplate line of his had additional weight to it owing to the circumstances.

“Our enemies want to take away my freedom because I will never let them take away your freedom," Trump told the crowd. "It's very simple. They want to silence me because I will never let them silence you."

"In the end, they're not after me, they're after you," he said to applause. "I just happened to be standing in their way, and I always will stand in their way."

Trump lost Colorado by 13 percentage points in 2020 and doesn’t need the state to win next year’s presidential election. But the danger for the former president is that more courts and election officials will follow Colorado’s lead and exclude Trump from must-win states.

Dozens of lawsuits have been filed nationally to disqualify Trump under Section 3, which was designed to keep former Confederates from returning to government after the Civil War. It bars from office anyone who swore an oath to “support” the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against it, and has been used only a handful of times since the decade after the Civil War.

“I think it may embolden other state courts or secretaries to act now that the bandage has been ripped off,” Derek Muller, a Notre Dame law professor who has closely followed the Section 3 cases, said after Tuesday’s ruling. “This is a major threat to Trump’s candidacy.”

The Colorado ruling stands in contrast with the Minnesota Supreme Court, which last month decided that the state party can put anyone it wants on its primary ballot. It dismissed a Section 3 lawsuit but said the plaintiffs could try again during the general election.

In another 14th Amendment case, a Michigan judge ruled that Congress, not the judiciary, should decide whether Trump can stay on the ballot. That ruling is being appealed. The liberal group behind those cases, Free Speech For People, also filed another lawsuit in Oregon seeking to bounce Trump from the ballot there.