Colorado state Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D) has filed a legal brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, supporting actions by courts in her home state to disqualify Donald Trump from the presidential ballot this year over complaints from voters that he is an insurrectionist.
Griswold’s brief is more forceful than her previous comments on the issue have been. Throughout the litigation process that transpired in Colorado following six Republican and independent voters in the state suing to have Trump tossed from the ballot, Griswold displayed a more neutral tone, allowing the courts to arrive at their own decisions on the matter without her influence.
In her legal filing submitted to the High Court on Wednesday, however, Griswold expressed that she agrees with the Colorado courts’ findings.
“While the facts and historical significance of this case are extraordinary, Colorado’s process for addressing Petitioner Trump’s qualifications was routine,” Griswold said in her legal brief.
“Over the decades, Colorado has repeatedly relied on this state court procedure to resolve ballot access and other election disputes presenting novel and complex issues of both fact and law, including issues of constitutional magnitude,” Griswold stated, adding that the pre-election judicial process for ballot eligibility “is an important pillar in Colorado’s gold standard election process.”
“This Court should reject Petitioner’s Trump’s attempts to limit state electoral authority to avoid resolution of this case,” Griswold said.
Colorado’s state Supreme Court, reacting to a lower court’s finding that Trump was indeed an insurrectionist due to his actions during the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol building by a mob of his loyalists, deemed him disqualified to run for president in the state under the terms of the 14th Amendment of the federal Constitution.
Section 3 of that amendment states that no person, “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,” can serve in government office again if they “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the U.S. government “or given aid or comfort” to those who have.
Trump’s actions on January 6 arguably fit the bill; the former president riled up his loyalists with an incendiary speech about election fraud, then encouraged his followers to go to the Capitol, where the 2020 presidential election — which he lost to President Joe Biden — was being certified.
During the violent breach of the building, Trump refused, for several hours, to call off the mob or order the national guard to take action against them, instead using the opportunity to try to influence lawmakers to vote against the certification of the election. In his message finally telling his loyalists to leave, he told them he “loved” them.
Griswold noted that Trump needed to be treated just as any other person seeking to run for president would be.
“Just as Colorado cannot be forced to place on its presidential primary ballot a naturalized citizen, a minor, or someone twice elected to the presidency, it also should not be forced to include a candidate found by its courts to have violated his oath to support the Constitution by engaging in insurrection,” Griswold stated.
Dozens of amicus briefs have been filed to the Supreme Court by other interested parties in the case, including current and former Capitol Police officers who dealt directly with the mob of Trump loyalists who attacked the Capitol, as well as a group of former state Supreme Court justices in support of Colorado’s actions. Both of those briefs encourage the Court to allow states to disqualify Trump.
The case has implications for other states, too. Maine’s secretary of state declared Trump ineligible to run for president in that state, and several other states across the country are currently considering challenges to his eligibility from voters in their jurisdictions.
If disqualified by even a small handful of states, it would limit Trump’s path to garnering enough Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency in November.
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case on February 8. Many analysts expect that the 6-3 conservative majority Supreme Court — which includes three justices who Trump himself appointed — will not disqualify Trump from being able to run, and won’t allow individual states to decide for themselves if he is qualified. But recent polling shows that most Americans would oppose such a ruling.
According to an ABC News/Ipsos poll from mid-January, a plurality of Americans, 49 percent, back Colorado and Maine’s actions to disqualify Trump, with 46 percent disagreeing with those moves. On the larger question of what the Supreme Court should do, only 39 percent of Americans believe the Court should rule in a way that allows Trump to be on every state ballot in the country.
Meanwhile, 56 percent of Americans said they believe the Court should take one of two actions limiting Trump’s ability to run: either letting states decide individually (26 percent) or ruling that Trump should be ineligible throughout the entire U.S. (30 percent), deeming him an insurrectionist who is disqualified under the 14th Amendment.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today during our fundraiser. We have 4 days to add 310 new monthly donors. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.