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 nearcertain
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