No Ballot for You! Challenging a Candidate’s Qualifications to Run and Serve in Office

In March 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Trump v. Anderson and unanimously rejected the attempt to keep former President Donald Trump off Colorado’s 2024 ballots. Colorado had advanced a novel but straightforward argument: the events of January 6, 2021, rendered former President Trump ineligible for future federal office per the 14th Amendment to the U.S Constitution. Unable to serve, Colorado’s election officers were duty-bound to keep Trump off the ballot, or so the argument went. It did not matter that Trump was the near-certain Republican nominee for president or that he had a realistic shot at reelection.

Colorado’s opponents framed the question in more consequentialist terms. The U.S. presidency is a national office, its occupant picked by a national election. No one state could filter federal constitutional law through a state process to potentially decide the 2024 presidential election without the nation’s voters having a say. Presidents become presidents by winning elections, not trials. Anything else would be anti-democratic and anti-American, or so that argument went.

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