Having each state decide who's on the ballot who gets the vote over an ambiguous definition would've been bedlam come election time.
What I stated is that there is no mechanism for removing a disqualified federal candidate once elected. This SCOTUS ruling provides the precedent for future disqualification cases before their court.
I think I have seen three different justice counts... one that said unanimous, then I have seen mention of 5-4, and last one that said 6-3. Sorta confused... wasn't the decision 9-0?
9-0 with 4 justices agreeing with the judgement but disagreeing on some points. Mainly they don't think it should have to go back to congress. That it could be resolved in federal court.
I might be missing a few, but I remember these were the open questions that the Court could have ruled on: 0- Is Trump disqualified from state primary ballot? 1- Is Section 3 self-executing, meaning it's already constitutional law and we don't need a legislative body to write a law to execute it. 2- Does Section 3 apply to a POTUS/former POTUS? 3- Did Trump commit insurrection as ruled by the CO court? 4- Did Trump have his due process (and other constitutional rights) afforded to him by the CO court? #0 was answered. Trump is not disqualified from state ballots. All nine Justices agree (with different reasons) #1 was answered. The five conservatives said it was not self-executing, and that Congress must execute it. The four other Justices disagree. #2 to 4 were not answered. So, we are still left with these open (merit) questions. If and once Congress passes a law to execute Section 3, it could come right back to the Court to answer those open questions. This is very disappointing. Essentially, where we are now is that Trump is still considered an insurrectionist (as ruled by the CO court) and is disqualified (as ruled by the CO court), but Congress needs to execute that. At that time, the Court might then say, actually... no, he's not an insurrectionist and/or no, Congress cannot execute this against a POTUS/former POTUS.
The judgement that Colorado could not remove Trump from the ballot was 9-0. Three of the Justices concurred only in the judgement, while Justice Barrett concurred in Parts I and II-B of the opinion and in the judgement. So the judgement was 9-0, Parts I and II-B of the opinion were 6-3, and part II-A of the opinion was 5-4.
Trump still 'an adjudicated insurrectionist' after 'incoherent' SCOTUS opinion: George Conway Maya Boddie March 05, 2024 Longtime conservative lawyer George Conway on Monday did not mince words regarding his thoughts on the US Supreme Court's unanimous ruling to strike down the Colorado Supreme Court ruling that barred Donald Trump from the state's primary ballot based on the 14th Amendment's insurrection clause. Speaking with CNN's Kaitlan Collins, the anti-Trump attorney has adamantly stressed that the former president should not be allowed to serve another term due to his involvement in the January 6 attack on the US capitol. "George, you initially said that you thought the Supreme Court would have a difficult time," Collins said. "Your quote that I looked at today was, 'Avoiding the consequence of the plain language of the 14th amendment.' It was obviously a 9-0 call today. So I wonder what you made of this ruling. And if you feel differently now." Conway replied, "No, I don't think differently. I think they did have a very difficult time with it because I don't think any of the three opinions make any sense whatsoever. I think these opinions are fundamentally incoherent and they're fundamentally arbitrary, and I think it just shows the difficulty the court had in trying to select an off-ramp here. I mean, they totally rejected Trump's principal arguments, which were that the president is somehow not an officer of the United States, and the other argument, which was that he did did not engage in an insurrection." He continued, "And the latter, I think, is the most important takeaway from this. Notwithstanding Donald Trump declaring victory, he remains an adjudicated insurrectionist after this opinion because the Supreme Court did not, in any way, under cut, or contradict or suggest in any way there was any infirmity in the factual findings made by the lower courts." Collins asked, "Why do you think that was?" Conway said, "Because he's unquestionably an insurrectionist. I mean, it would have been absurd for the court to try to redefine what it means to engage in an insurrection and what an insurrection is to try to get Donald Trump off the hook. And that's what the court was terrified about. They didn't want to go there." "And you can see sort of the terror in the opinions, in the concurring opinions," he emphasized. "I mean, Justice [Amy Comey] Barrett — her opinion just exuded fear of the political consequences of the decision. And frankly, the concurring opinion, I know they're perceived as having attacked the majority opinion for going too far. But the problem was, it wasn't overreach by the majority, it was underreach by all nine justices. And the concurring opinion, frankly, its criticisms of the majority opinion actually end up undermining the concurrence's own opinion as to the result in the case, which was to affirm."
George Conway: SCOTUS Opinion Doesn't Even Make Sense "The plain text of the Constitution from here says that Donald Trump is disqualified. So, you know, that was the real problem with today's decision," he said. Susie Madrak — March 5, 2024 Jen Psaki welcomed George Conway to give his take on yesterday's convoluted SCOTUS decision. "You tweeted today, 'it doesn't even profess to be interpreting the text,' " she said. "It doesn't," Conway said. "You know, Professor Iffel said that there was a lot of overreach in the majority opinion. I think the problem here is that all nine justices underreached. They simply decided that they were not going to apply the Constitution the way you normally apply it, which is, you read the text and you try to figure out what it means in the context of history and you apply it. "The plain text of the Constitution provision from here says that Donald Trump is disqualified. So, you know, that was the real problem with today's decision. I don't make much of the concurring opinions' criticism of the majority for having gone too far, because at the end of the day, I don't see, I can't see where in the majority opinion it does say that states can't enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment against federal office holders. The only difference I can see between that holding and what the four concurring justices, the four women, interestingly, said was that they probably would have restricted it to the president, and just the president. Again, there is just no basis, no textural basis, no historical basis." "For them not to apply it?" Psaki asked. "Not to apply it! The only argument that is ever made in any of the opinions as to why you would restrict states from applying the 14th Amendment, the plain text of the 14th Amendment, the 14th Amendment and all sorts of other provisions that apply regardless of whether Congress says -- whatever Congress, including the protection clause which prohibits race discrimination, the fact of the matter is that there is no basis to single out Section 3 as being different from these other provisions. They are just making it up. All the justices were making it up," Conway said. He says he believes it was because they were terrified of the reaction. "I think that is clear from Justice Barrett's concurring opinion. She says all of this stuff, she says the quiet part out loud. 'This is not the time to amplify disagreement with stridency. The court has settled a politically-charged case in the volatile season of a presidential election, particularly in these circumstances. Writings of the court should turn national temperature down, not up.' "She's terrified, and they all were terrified, including the liberal judges, okay? The only difference that I can see between what the liberal judges said and what the majority said was that they probably would have restricted it to the president. If they did that, that opinion would have been even worse because it would have looked like you just cherry-picked the president out of a pile to say that the presidency is somehow special," Conway said. "There were other insurrectionists. Look, the bottom line is they were never, ever going to rule against Trump here, and not because it was Donald Trump, but because of the fear that this court with only a limited amount of political capital in these days, and that's where we would probably disagree on the reasons for that, we agree and disagree. it's a similar. They don't have the political capital to all of a sudden drop this ruling on the public and say that Donald Trump can't appear on the ballot. And they were terrified." "Why should they have to worry about political capital? They are the highest court in the land," Psaki said. "They are the highest court in the land, but they are worried about political capital! This is a court which basically, and you are going to disagree with some of the reasons for that, of what I'm about to say and agree with some of it, that has basically wasted its political capital on things it should have never been involved in. It should have never been involved in abortion, for example. You will disagree on that but I say that it was a mistake to get involved the way they did. Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg kind of agrees with me on that. "It was a mistake to get out of it after 50 years, after telling hundreds of millions of women that they have this right. So they have blown a lot of capital on things that they should not have been concerned with because it's not in the Constitution. This provision, Section 14, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, actually is in the constitution. And it's clear. They didn't have to make anything up to apply that. The only rationale they had for not applying it is to say, oh, well, you will get this patchwork. Some states will rule this way. Some states will rule that way. Some states will use different records. Some states will use different procedures. But that shouldn't be the courts problem! That should be the insurrectionists' problem. And this guy, as you point out, the major takeaway from this case is that Donald Trump remains because there is nothing in any of these opinions that says otherwise." "Adjudicated an insurrectionist, he still that, just as he is already an adjudicated rapist," Conway concluded.
Your argument is with a lawyer with considerable pertinent experience. If SCOTUS thought that Trump was not an oath taking officer that would have been there easy off ramp. No need to make up new law wrt Congress needing to act. For the other point about Trump being an insurrectionist, higher courts usually do not overrule lower courts finding of fact, especially when the lower court did their due diligence. The SCOTUS could have found some reason to put aside the finding of insurrection and that too would have been an easy off ramp.
But before disqualifying someone under Section 3, the justices observed, there must be a determination that the provision actually applies to that person. And Section 5 of the 14th Amendment gives the power to make that determination to Congress, by authorizing it to pass “appropriate legislation” to “enforce” the 14th Amendment. Nothing in the 14th Amendment, the court stressed, gives states the power to enforce Section 3 against candidates for federal office, nor was there any history of states doing so in the years after the amendment was ratified. https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/03/...ot-remove-trump-from-ballot-for-insurrection/
Zebulon Vance In February 1868, Vance attended the North Carolina Conservation Convention, also called the Rebel Convention, in Raleigh.[46][47] The Dailey Standard noted that the convention was noteworthy for its hatred of the government and formerly enslaved people.[46] After many calls from the attendees for him to speak, Vance spontaneously talked about his lack of prejudice toward the formerly enslaved, commending their conduct and fidelity during the war. However, he affirmed his belief that only educated whites should vote in the South.[47] In 1870, the North Carolina legislature appointed Vance to the United States Senate, but because of the Fourteenth Amendment, he was not eligible to serve unless authorized by a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of Congress.[35][13][42] Vance spent two years unsuccessfully petitioning the Republican-dominated Senate to seat him; he ended up resigning from the appointment.[35][42][20]
