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Supreme Court of the United States • 2024

Trump v. Anderson

601 U.S. 100

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Takeaway

In short, this case holds that States cannot invoke Section 3 to bar candidates for federal office from presidential ballots; enforcement against federal candidates belongs to Congress, not individual States.

Background

Six Colorado voters petitioned in state court to prevent former President Donald Trump from appearing on Colorado’s 2024 Republican presidential-primary ballot. They alleged that Trump had engaged in insurrection by inciting the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol after taking the presidential oath, making him ineligible for office under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

After a five-day trial, the Colorado District Court found that Trump had engaged in insurrection but denied relief. It concluded that Section 3 did not cover the Presidency because the provision does not expressly name the President and, in its view, the President was not an “officer of the United States” for Section 3 purposes.

The Colorado Supreme Court, by a 4–3 vote, reversed that conclusion. It held that Section 3 applies to the President, that Trump had engaged in insurrection, and that Colorado election law authorized his exclusion from the ballot. It ordered the Secretary of State not to list Trump on the primary ballot or count write-in votes for him. The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari and reversed.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether a State may enforce Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment against a candidate for federal office by excluding the candidate from its presidential ballot.

Holding

No. States may enforce Section 3 with respect to state offices, but they lack constitutional authority to enforce it against federal officeholders or candidates, including presidential candidates.

Reasoning

The Court began with federalism. States retain broad sovereign authority to establish qualifications for their own officers and regulate their own elections, so they may disqualify persons from state office under Section 3. Federal offices stand differently: federal officials derive their authority from the people of the Nation as a whole, not from any individual State. A State therefore needs an affirmative constitutional delegation of power before it may regulate the qualifications of federal officials or candidates.

The Fourteenth Amendment contains no such delegation. The Amendment was adopted after the Civil War to expand federal power and impose new limits on state power. Its enforcement provision, Section 5, expressly grants enforcement authority to Congress. Reading the Amendment silently to grant States power to disqualify candidates for federal office would invert the Amendment’s basic shift of authority from the States to the National Government.

The Elections Clause and the Electors Clause do not supply the missing state authority. Although those provisions let States regulate the mechanics of congressional and presidential elections, they do not implicitly authorize States to decide, for the Nation, whether a candidate is disqualified from federal office under Section 3. Nor could States remove sitting federal officials for a supposed Section 3 violation, a result incompatible with the Federal Government’s independence from state control.

Section 3’s amnesty clause reinforces that conclusion. Congress may remove a Section 3 disability by a two-thirds vote of each House, and Congress historically sometimes did so after an election. If States could exclude federal candidates before an election, Congress would have to act before voting to make its amnesty power effective. The Court found it implausible that the Constitution gave States power to burden Congress’s authority in that way.

History also favored federal, rather than state, enforcement. In the period after ratification, States disqualified people from state offices, while Congress enacted the Enforcement Act of 1870 and used its own constitutional powers to address Section 3 issues involving federal officers and Members of Congress. The absence of a historical tradition of state enforcement against federal candidates was strong evidence that the asserted power did not exist.

The danger is most acute in a presidential election. Different States could apply different procedures, burdens of proof, and evidentiary rules to the same alleged insurrection. That state-by-state process could leave a candidate eligible in some States and barred in others, producing a patchwork that disrupts the national character of the Presidency and potentially changes voters’ and States’ behavior across the country. The Constitution does not require the Nation to accept that disorder.

Issue #2

Whether enforcement of Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates rests with Congress acting under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Holding

Yes. The Court concluded that Congress, subject to judicial review, is responsible for prescribing the means of enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates through appropriate legislation under Section 5.

Reasoning

Section 3 imposes a serious disqualification, so someone must determine which particular people fall within its terms. The Court relied on Chief Justice Chase’s observation in Griffin’s Case that proceedings, evidence, decisions, and enforcement mechanisms are needed to identify persons subject to the disability and give the provision practical effect. Section 5 authorizes Congress to provide those mechanisms through appropriate legislation.

The historical record supported that understanding. Soon after the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification, Congress concluded that Section 3 itself supplied no adequate procedural means to remove people who were holding office in violation of it. Congress responded with the Enforcement Act of 1870, which authorized federal actions to remove certain disqualified officeholders and made holding or attempting to hold office in violation of Section 3 a federal crime.

Congress’s Section 5 power is not unlimited: enforcement legislation must be remedial and appropriately tailored to preventing or remedying the conduct Section 3 prohibits. But the Court regarded it as especially implausible that States, which do not act under Section 5, could exercise broader discretion than Congress to determine how Section 3 should be enforced against federal candidates.

Concurrences

Justice Barrett

Reasoning

Justice Barrett joined the portions of the Court’s opinion establishing that States cannot enforce Section 3 against presidential candidates. In her view, that state-power holding fully resolved the case because the suit arose under Colorado law and challenged Colorado’s ballot decision.

She declined to join the Court’s further discussion of whether federal legislation is the exclusive means of enforcing Section 3. That issue was not necessary to decide the case. Stressing the Court’s unanimous judgment in a politically charged presidential-election dispute, she urged the Court to avoid unnecessarily amplifying its internal disagreements.

Justice Sotomayor, Justice Kagan, and Justice Jackson

Reasoning

Justice Sotomayor, Justice Kagan, and Justice Jackson joined the Court's result, but justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson agreed that Colorado could not use Section 3 to remove a presidential candidate from its ballot. They reasoned that presidential elections implicate a uniquely national interest, and state-by-state adjudication of a candidate’s eligibility would threaten the constitutional design of a Federal Government directly accountable to the people of the United States.

They maintained, however, that this federalism rationale was both secure and sufficient. In their view, the Court should have stopped after holding that a State lacks authority to disqualify a presidential candidate under Section 3 rather than deciding how federal enforcement may occur in future cases.

They objected to the majority’s conclusion that Section 3 disqualification of a federal candidate can occur only through legislation enacted by Congress under Section 5. Section 3 says directly that no oathbreaking insurrectionist may hold covered office, while Section 5 gives Congress power to enforce the Amendment without saying that legislation is a prerequisite to its operation. The concurrence emphasized that Reconstruction Amendment guarantees are generally self-executing and that other constitutional qualifications for the Presidency do not depend on implementing legislation.

In their view, the majority’s unnecessary pronouncements foreclosed possible forms of federal enforcement, including judicial enforcement and enforcement under general federal legal duties, despite no federal enforcement action being before the Court. They viewed that ruling as an unwarranted restriction on an important constitutional safeguard against oathbreaking insurrectionists.