A judge in Colorado said no to a request to stop Donald Trump from being in the state’s 2024 Republican presidential primary.
It was a big trial about whether Mr. Trump should be allowed to be in office again because of what he did before the Capitol riot in 2021. Now the trial is over.
Other states have also tried and failed to make similar changes based on a constitutional amendment from the US Civil War era.
Mr Trump did not go to the hearing and said he didn’t care about it.
Explanation of the 14th Amendment’s plan to disqualify Trump.
District Judge Sarah Wallace made a decision on Friday that says the Colorado secretary of state has to put Mr. Trump on the state’s primary ballot next year.
The 14th Amendment says that people who promised to follow the Constitution but then rebelled against it cannot hold public office. Some voters in Colorado want this rule to apply to Mr Trump because of his role in the 2021 riot at the US Capitol.
However, Ms Wallace did not agree. She said in her decision that the rule in the 14th amendment about uprisings does not include presidents because it does not specifically mention them in Section 3.
“After hearing both sides, the Court decided that the President of the United States is not considered to be an ‘officer of the United States. ‘”
“The court thinks that the people who wrote Section Three may not have wanted to include someone who has only taken the presidential oath,” she wrote in her decision.
Ms Wallace discovered that Mr. Trump encouraged a rebellion on January 6, 2021. She also found that the First Amendment doesn’t protect Trump’s speech.
The decision is the most recent problem for attempts to remove Mr. Trump from the Republican primary election.
Lawsuits in New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Michigan have already been unsuccessful.
After the decision was made, the left-leaning group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, who filed the lawsuit in Colorado, said they will appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court soon.
The group clapped for Ms Wallace’s discovery that Mr Trump had taken part in the 6th January insurrection.
“We are happy that we brought this important case and we believe we are correct based on the facts and the law,” the group stated. “Today was not the last part of this work, but just another step forward. ”
After a week of trial, lawyers for the voters argued that Mr. Trump should not be allowed to run for president again because of his involvement in the Capitol riots on January 6th. The lawyers for the people suing called a few people to testify, including two police officers who got hurt during the riots at the US Capitol.
Mr Trump’s lawyers said he was not responsible for the attacks. They saw that other attempts to sue the president have not worked.
Trump’s lawyer, Scott Gessler, said the petitioners are asking the court to do something that has never been done before in the history of the United States. “The evidence isn’t enough for the court to do it. ”
The 14th Amendment was approved after the Civil War, and Section 3 was used to stop people who wanted to leave the country from getting their old jobs back once southern states were back in the Union.
It was used against Confederate president Jefferson Davis and vice-president Alexander Stephens. But it hasn’t been used much since then.
The legal plan has gained more support since August, when Mr. Trump was accused of trying to interfere with the election in two different criminal cases.
It is not clear if there will be any more attempts to stop Mr. Trump’s name from appearing on the ballot in Colorado or other states before the Republican primary and the general election.
Legal experts think that this case, or a similar one, will probably go to the US Supreme Court.