(C) Colorado Newsline This story was originally published by Colorado Newsline and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Trump brief asks Supreme Court to put ‘decisive end’ to 14th Amendment challenges [1] ['Chase Woodruff', 'More From Author', '- January'] Date: 2024-01 Trump disqualification Read more from our reporting on the Trump 14th Amendment case here. Attorneys for former President Donald Trump on Thursday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to “put a swift and decisive end” to efforts to bar him from the 2024 ballot as they appeal the Colorado Supreme Court’s landmark decision to disqualify the Republican presidential frontrunner under a Civil War-era insurrection clause. The nation’s highest court agreed earlier this month to review the historic Dec. 19 ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court, which found that Trump’s actions in relation to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol disqualify him from office under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Section 3 of the amendment prohibits an “officer of the United States” who took an oath to support the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection” from holding office again. “The Court should reverse the Colorado decision because President Trump is not even subject to Section 3, as the President is not an ‘officer of the United States’ under the Constitution,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in their Jan. 18 brief. “And even if President Trump were subject to Section 3 he did not ‘engage in’ anything that qualifies as ‘insurrection.’” Trump was indicted last year by federal prosecutors who allege that his “pervasive and destabilizing lies” about the results of the 2020 election “targeted a bedrock function of the United States federal government” on Jan. 6, 2021. Following the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling, Maine became the second state to bar Trump from the ballot under Section 3 when Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows issued a ruling to that effect on Dec. 28. Both the Colorado and Maine rulings were stayed pending the outcome of a U.S. Supreme Court appeal. With similar challenges pending in at least a dozen other states, it’s widely anticipated that the Supreme Court — where conservative justices hold a 6-3 majority — will weigh in with a precedent-setting ruling. “The Court should reverse (the Colorado ruling) and end these unconstitutional disqualification efforts once and for all,” lawyers for Trump wrote. The Colorado case was brought last year against Trump and Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, by six Republican and unaffiliated voters, with support from the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Colorado Common Cause, which supported the plaintiffs’ case with an amicus, or friend-of-the-court, brief before the Colorado Supreme Court, on Friday urged the U.S. Supreme Court “to set a critical legal precedent to safeguard the future of American democracy.” “The Supreme Court must embrace its role as an active defender of our Constitution, or else it may crumble under the immense pressure it will surely face in the years to come,” Aly Belknap, the group’s executive director, said in a statement. In a separate amicus brief filed Thursday, nearly 200 congressional Republicans argued to the Supreme Court that Colorado had overstepped its bounds by applying the Section 3 disqualification to Trump, and “trample(d) the prerogatives of members of Congress.” “Enforcing Section 3 requires implementing legislation from Congress, thereby protecting candidates from abuse by state officials,” said the brief, signed by 135 GOP House members and 41 GOP senators. Republican U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado Springs was among the signatories to the amicus brief, but Colorado’s two other GOP members of Congress — Reps. Lauren Boebert of Silt and Ken Buck of Windsor — were not. Griswold had declined to take a position on Trump’s ballot eligibility prior to a court ruling, but has since said the state Supreme Court “got it right.” Other parties in the case — including Griswold, the plaintiffs and the Colorado Republican Party — have until Jan. 31 to submit briefs in response to Trump’s argument. “The presidency should not be a get-out-of-jail-free card for engaging in insurrection,” Griswold said in a statement Thursday. “The American people deserve leaders who support and respect the language of the Constitution. I will be filing my office’s brief in response to Trump’s groundless contentions, and I look forward to oral arguments before the Supreme Court next month.” [END] --- [1] Url: https://coloradonewsline.com/briefs/trump-supreme-court-14th-amendment-challenges/ Published and (C) by Colorado Newsline Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/coloradonewsline/