Donald Trump could remain on Colorado’s presidential ballot if the former president decides to appeal the state Supreme Court’s historic ruling that ordered his removal Tuesday.

If Trump even asks the US Supreme Court to step in by January 4 – the date set by the Colorado Supreme Court for parties to appeal before the ruling goes into effect – the decision will remain paused, according to Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas Law School.

That means the GOP frontrunner will “almost certainly” remain on Colorado’s primary ballot on March 5, according to Vladeck.

The Colorado Supreme Court said it does "not reach these conclusions lightly" after finding that former President Donald Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021, when he called for the crowd to march to the US Capitol, was not protected by the First Amendment.

"We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach,” the court said in its decision.

The court found that Trump "intended that his speech would result in the use of violence or lawless action on January 6 to prevent the peaceful transfer of power."

According to the court’s ruling, despite Trump’s “knowledge of the anger that he had instigated, his calls to arms, his awareness of the threats of violence that had been made leading up to January 6, and the obvious fact that many in the crowd were angry and armed, President Trump told his riled-up supporters to walk down to the Capitol and fight.” 

Trump then “stood back and let the fighting happen, despite having the ability and authority to stop it (with his words or by calling in the military), thereby confirming that this violence was what he intended,” the court found. 

“When President Trump told his supporters that they were ‘allowed to go by very different rules’ and that if they did not ‘fight like hell,’ they would not ‘have a country anymore,’ it was likely that his supporters would heed his encouragement and act violently,” the court found. 

The Colorado Supreme Court decision disqualifying Donald Trump from the 2024 primary ballot reversed the trial judge’s conclusion that the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban” doesn’t apply to the presidency. 

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment says:
“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State,” if they took an oath to “support” the Constitution and then engaged in insurrection.
But it doesn’t say anything about the presidency.

The trial judge concluded that because of the vagueness and omissions in the constitutional amendment, the ban doesn’t apply to the presidency. 

But the Colorado Supreme Court disagreed. The court said there was enough evidence to conclude that “the drafters of this Amendment intended the phrase ‘any office’ to be broadly inclusive, and certainly to include the Presidency.” 

“We do not place the same weight the district court did on the fact that the Presidency is not specifically mentioned in Section Three. It seems most likely that the Presidency is not specifically included because it is so evidently an ‘office,’” the court said in its decision. 

The justices continued: “A conclusion that the Presidency is something other than an office ‘under’ the United States is fundamentally at odds with the idea that all government officials, including the President, serve ‘we the people.’”

While Colorado's 10 electoral votes were not believed to be part of former President Donald Trump's projected path to reelection, CNN political director David Chalian says the unprecedented decision by the state's Supreme Court to remove Trump from its ballot could impact the 2024 race.

"If you start taking potentially available electoral votes off the board, the map to 270, even though this was not part of his 2020 path, becomes more complicated in that way," he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday.

CNN political commentator Alyssa Farah Griffin agreed, saying that the historic move could have ramifications for Trump.

"He's not necessarily playing for the 10 electoral votes in Colorado," she told Blitzer. "But it's the precedent it sets and it's also just the mindset that it signals to voters, which is, for the first time in history, he is unfit to appear on a ballot for the presidency."

Senior legal analyst Elie Honig noted that other states have attempted to take Trump off of the ballot as well, but have largely fallen flat. The former president remains on the ballot in  Minnesota, Arizona, Michigan and elsewhere.

"There have been dozens of these challenges filed across the country, and 18 or so of them have either failed, been rejected, or been withdrawn by the plaintiff. So this is really an outlier."

CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen, the White House ethics czar under former President Barack Obama, said that despite the similar challenges failing across the country, he expects the US Supreme Court to take Tuesday’s ruling “seriously.” 

“When you just look at the plain language of the 14th Amendment. You put that together with what the January 6th committee found – the testimony and the evidence that were taken by the trial court here: The trial court found, with merit, that Donald Trump participated in insurrection.
"And the 14th Amendment is not going to be so easily dismissed. So I think the Supreme Court will wrestle with it. They'll take it seriously – and it's very tough to predict what they'll do,” Eisen told Blitzer.

This post has been updated with more analysis of the ruling.

The three Colorado Supreme Court justices who dissented from the majority ruling removing Donald Trump from the state’s primary ballot cited various rationales.  

Justice Carlos Samour said that he agreed with the majority’s finding that the Constitution “bars from public office anyone who, having previously taken an oath as an officer of the United States to support the federal Constitution, engages in insurrection.”  

But he raised due process concerns and took issue with the majority’s decision to use state law “as an engine to provide the necessary thrust to effectuate” the so-called federal insurrectionist ban. 

“My colleagues in the majority concede that there is currently no legislation enacted by Congress to enforce Section Three. This is of no moment to them, however, because they conclude that Section Three is self-executing, and that the states are free to apply their own procedures (including compressed ones in an election code) to enforce it. That is hard for me to swallow,” he wrote, referring to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

Chief Justice Brian Boatright wrote in his dissent that he believes Colorado election law “was not enacted to decide whether a candidate engaged in insurrection,” and said he would have dismissed the challenge to Trump’s eligibility. 

“In the absence of an insurrection-related conviction, I would hold that a request to disqualify a candidate under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment is not a proper cause of action under Colorado’s election code,” he wrote. 

Justice Maria E. Berkenkotter wrote in her dissent that she didn’t think Colorado state courts had the authority to decide whether a presidential candidate can be disqualified under the “insurrectionist ban.” 

She said the majority “construes the court’s authority too broadly,” and that the lower court erred when it decided not to grant Trump’s request to toss the case out.  

The Trump campaign said it would “swiftly file an appeal” following the Colorado Supreme Court decision.

“The Colorado Supreme Court issued a completely flawed decision tonight and we will swiftly file an appeal to the United States Supreme Court and a concurrent request for a stay of this deeply undemocratic decision. We have full confidence that the U.S. Supreme Court will quickly rule in our favor and finally put an end to these unAmerican lawsuits,” campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement.

The Colorado Supreme Court had “little difficulty” in determining that the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol was an insurrection. 

The court, in its ruling, found there was “substantial evidence” that Trump laid the groundwork to claim the 2020 election was rigged in President Joe Biden’s favor even before the election and worked to pressure Republican officials in various states to overturn the results. 

The court also found that Trump’s messages in the lead-up to the January 6 rally at the Ellipse in Washington, DC, “were a call to his supporters to fight and that his supporters responded to that call.” 

The former president, the court found, also put a “significant target on Vice President (Mike) Pence’s back” when he tweeted on January 6 that Pence needed to send electoral votes back to the states.

On January 6, the court notes, Trump also called for the crowd at the Ellipse to march to the Capitol, and the crowd “unsurprisingly … reacted to President Trump’s words with calls for violence.” 

“President Trump’s direct and express efforts, over several months, exhorting his supporters to march to the Capitol to prevent what he falsely characterized as an alleged fraud on the people of this country were indisputably overt and voluntary,” the court found.
“Moreover, the evidence amply showed that President Trump undertook all these actions to aid and further a common unlawful purpose that he himself conceived and set in motion: prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election and stop the peaceful transfer of power," it added.

The Colorado Supreme Court removed former President Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 ballot, ruling that he isn’t an eligible presidential candidate because of the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban.” The ruling was 4-3 and will be placed on hold pending appeal until January 4.

Read the ruling:

The Colorado Supreme Court ruled to remove former President Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 ballot, ruling that he isn’t an eligible presidential candidate because of the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban.”

“Because he is disqualified, it would be wrongful act under the Election Code for the Colorado Secretary of State to list him as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot,” the court said.

Here are several of the key findings the court issued in its decision:

• Colorado state law allows voters to challenge Trump’s eligibility under the federal constitution’s “insurrectionist ban.”
• Colorado courts can enforce the ban without any action from Congress.
• The insurrectionist ban applies to the presidency.
• The January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol was an insurrection.
• Trump “engaged in” the insurrection.
• Trump’s speech “inciting the crowd” on January 6 was “not protected by the First Amendment.”

Trump denies wrongdoing regarding January 6 and has decried the 14th Amendment lawsuits as an abuse of the legal process. He is under federal and state indictment in connection with his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and he has pleaded not guilty.

In a stunning and unprecedented decision, the Colorado Supreme Court removed former President Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 ballot on Tuesday. The court ruled 4-3 that Trump isn’t an eligible presidential candidate because of the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban.”  

The ruling will be placed on hold pending appeal until January 4.

The court upheld a trial judge’s decision that Trump engaged in the January 6, 2021, insurrection — and then overturned her conclusion that the ban doesn’t apply to the presidency.    

The state Supreme Court decision only applies to Colorado but is sure to roil the 2024 presidential campaign. It tees up an appeal to the US Supreme Court, which could settle the matter for the entire nation. 

Colorado election officials have said the matter needs to be settled by January 5, which is the statutory deadline to set the list of candidates for the GOP primary.

Trump denies wrongdoing regarding January 6 and has decried the 14th Amendment lawsuits as an abuse of the legal process. He is under federal and state indictment in connection with his attempts to overturn the 2020 election – and he has pleaded not guilty.

On the campaign trail, Trump has derided the lawsuits and argued that they are an attempt to use the courts to stop him from returning to the White House while he is the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. 

More on the 14th Amendment: Ratified after the Civil War, the 14th Amendment says officials who take an oath to support the Constitution are banned from future office if they “engaged in insurrection.” But the wording is vague, it doesn’t explicitly mention the presidency, and has only been applied twice since 1919. 

This post has been updated with more details on the ruling.

The Colorado Supreme Court heard arguments on December 6 in a closely watched case about whether the US Constitution’s ban on insurrectionists holding public office applies to former President Donald Trump because of the January 6, 2021, US Capitol riot.

The seven-member court appeared divided at times, pushing back on arguments from both Trump and the challengers who want to remove him from Colorado’s presidential ballot in 2024. Their decision is expected to be appealed to the US Supreme Court, no matter which way they rule.

With support from bipartisan legal scholars, liberal groups filed lawsuits across the country to enforce the 14th Amendment’s insurrectionist ban. A suit was filed in Oregon during the Colorado hearing. But so far, these cases have fallen flat, keeping Trump on the ballot in Minnesota, Arizona, Michigan and elsewhere.

The Colorado justices grappled with a key question: Does the ban apply to presidents?

They are reviewing a ruling from Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace, who presided over a bench trial last month, and concluded that Trump “engaged in an insurrection” on January 6, 2021. However, she also ruled that the 14th Amendment’s disqualification clause doesn’t apply to Trump because the provision doesn’t mention the presidency.

“If it was so important that the president be included, I come back to the question, why not spell it out?” Justice Carlos Samour asked a lawyer for the challengers. “Why not include president and vice president? … They spelled out senator or representative.”

Two other justices pointed out that other provisions of the Constitution don’t appear to include the president when they refer to federal officers, pushing back on a key pillar of the challengers’ case. The challengers claimed the disqualification clause covers the presidency because it bans insurrectionists from “any office … under the United States.”

But later, when questioning Trump lawyer Scott Gessler, some justices said it wouldn’t make sense for there to be a loophole allowing insurrectionists to become president.

“I saw no rational reason for that type of an exclusion,” Justice Monica Marquez said.

Several of the justices also hammered Gessler over his contention that January 6 was only a riot and wasn’t an insurrection. The 14th Amendment doesn’t define insurrection, and the justices are now reviewing the trial judge’s decision that January 6 fit the bill.

Read more about the ruling here.

In some ways, the trial in Colorado that looked at whether the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban” disqualifies Donald Trump from serving as president again because of his role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection served as a preview of the much higher-profile federal election subversion trial against Trump that is slated for March.

In that criminal case, Trump wasn’t charged with inciting the riot, or with insurrection. But the indictment from special counsel Jack Smith quotes from Trump’s January 6 speech and describes how he fueled the violence. Trump has pleaded not guilty.

This was a major part of the Colorado case, and federal prosecutors might similarly seek to feature testimony from police officers and lawmakers who can describe how Trump’s actions obstructed the certification of the 2020 election results.

Trump’s defense in Colorado relied heavily on January 6 revisionism and featured testimony from an unrepentant US Capitol rioter and others who still maintain the 2020 election was stolen.

In terms of trial strategy, these witnesses could undercut the challengers’ argument that January 6 was an insurrection. The 14th Amendment doesn’t actually define the term.

One of the January 6 rally organizers, Amy Kremer, testified in the Colorado case that the crowd at the Ellipse was full of “patriotic, freedom-loving citizens” who were “joyful, singing and dancing,” including after Trump wrapped his remarks. After her testimony, Kremer posted online a photo of the overrun Capitol and said, “The 2020 Election was stolen!”

Trump’s lawyers say this showed that his words didn’t incite violence, a core element of his defense. Plenty of rallygoers ignored Trump’s call to go to the Capitol. Many who did march there stayed peaceful. But thousands participated in a violent riot, as highlighted earlier in the trial by two of the 140 police officers who were wounded in the melee.

One rioter, Tom Bjorklund, testified for Trump’s defense and admitted on the stand that he breached Capitol grounds, though he said he never entered the building. Bjorklund, now the Colorado GOP treasurer, hasn’t been charged with any crimes and testified that he didn’t engage in violence at the Capitol.

“It’s kind of an insult to insurrectionists around the world,” Bjorklund said. “Because Republicans just mad about an election hardly rises to the level of an insurrection.”

A Colorado judge on November 17 issued a stunning ruling that fell just short of removing Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 ballot based on the 14th Amendment’s insurrectionist ban. The 102-page decision was a win for Trump, but it read more like a condemnation.

Nonetheless, it’s the latest legal victory for the GOP frontrunner, who has now defended his spot on the ballot in several key states, including Michigan and Minnesota, though appeals are underway.

Here are some takeaways from the major ruling in Colorado:

• Trump engaged in insurrection, judge says: Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace concluded – based on testimony of US Capitol Police officers, lawmakers, clips from Trump’s January 6, 2021, speech and expert testimony about right-wing extremism – that Trump engaged in the January 6 insurrection. This was a major legal hurdle that the challengers were able to overcome. And it’s the first time that any court in the country has ruled that Trump engaged in the insurrection, a watershed moment in the quest for accountability for January 6.
• Judge rejects Trump's free-speech defense: Notably, Wallace gave a thorough legal analysis of Trump’s incendiary speech at the Ellipse. She devoted 17 pages to examine Trump’s words and whether they fit the legal standard of inciting violence. Trump has repeatedly argued that his rhetoric that day was protected speech under the Supreme Court’s precedents in First Amendment cases involving incitement. His lawyers also made that argument in Colorado. But Wallace rejected those free-speech defenses, and instead concluded that his speech that day “was intended as, and was understood by a portion of the crowd as, a call to arms.”
• The ban's application to presidents: Despite all of those damning findings, Wallace ruled on narrow grounds that Trump should remain on Colorado’s ballot because the constitution’s insurrectionist ban apparently doesn’t apply to presidents.
• Vindication for January 6 committee: The judge embraced key parts of the House January 6 committee report and said Trump’s lawyers failed to discredit its findings – despite their claims that the panel was “overwhelmingly biased” against him. The January 6 committee, which was made up of Democrats and two anti-Trump Republicans, blamed Trump for inciting the insurrection and recommended his disqualification under the 14th Amendment.

Keep reading more takeaways here.

A Colorado judge ruled in November that former President Donald Trump “engaged in an insurrection” on January 6, 2021, but rejected an attempt to remove him from the state’s 2024 primary ballot, finding that the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban” doesn’t apply to presidents.

The 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, says American officials who take an oath to support the Constitution are banned from future office if they “engaged in insurrection.” But the Constitution doesn’t say how to enforce the ban, and it has only been applied twice since 1919 – which is why many experts view these lawsuits as long shots.

The provision explicitly bans insurrectionists from serving as US senators, representatives, and even presidentiall electors – but it does not say anything about presidents. It says it covers “any office, civil or military, under the United States,” and Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace ruled that this does not include the office of the presidency.

“After considering the arguments on both sides, the Court is persuaded that ‘officers of the United States,’ did not include the President of the United States,” she wrote. “It appears to the Court that for whatever reason the drafters of Section Three did not intend to include a person who had only taken the Presidential Oath.”

The major decision issued by Wallace came after judges in Minnesota and Michigan also refused to remove Trump from that state’s Republican primary ballots. Legal scholars believe these cases will, in some form, end up at the US Supreme Court. But before that, the GOP and independent voters who filed the Colorado lawsuit in coordination with a liberal watchdog group, appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court.

These three high-profile challenges against Trump, which had the backing of well-funded advocacy groups, have so far failed to remove him from a single ballot, with the 2024 primary season fast approaching.

However, the 102-page ruling in Colorado offered a searing condemnation of Trump’s conduct, labeling him as an insurrectionist who “actively primed the anger of his extremist supporters,” and “acted with the specific intent to incite political violence and direct it at the Capitol.”

Wallace concluded that “Trump engaged in an insurrection on January 6, 2021 through incitement, and that the First Amendment does not protect Trump’s speech” at the Ellipse that day. She also found that Trump “acted with the specific intent to disrupt the Electoral College certification of President Biden’s electoral victory through unlawful means.”