Trump v. Anderson
The Supreme Court unanimously reversed a Colorado ruling that had removed former President Trump from the state's 2024 presidential primary ballot, holding that states have no authority to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment's insurrection disqualification against candidates for federal office.
The decision reserves that enforcement power for Congress, though three justices warned the majority went too far in foreclosing other potential means of applying the disqualification at the federal level.
“Because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the States, responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates, we reverse.”
The Court's one-sentence statement of the controlling principle and its reason for reversing the Colorado Supreme Court.
How it got here: Colorado voters filed a petition in state court; the state District Court denied relief; the Colorado Supreme Court reversed 4–3 and ordered Trump off the primary ballot; the Supreme Court granted certiorari and reversed.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Six Colorado voters — four Republicans and two unaffiliated — filed a legal challenge arguing that former President Trump was constitutionally barred from running for president again under the Fourteenth Amendment's insurrection disqualification. They contended that Trump had intentionally organized and incited the crowd that stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, while Congress was certifying the 2020 presidential election results, and that this conduct rendered him ineligible to serve again.
The question before the Court
Could a state remove a presidential candidate from its primary ballot by claiming he participated in an insurrection under the Fourteenth Amendment's disqualification clause?
The Court's answer
No — Colorado lacked the power to remove Trump from its primary ballot under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Constitution assigns enforcement of that provision against federal candidates and officeholders to Congress, not the states. While states can use Section 3 to disqualify people from their own state offices — and historically did so after ratification — nothing in the Constitution delegates that same power to states over federal candidates. Reading the Amendment, which was designed to restrict state authority, as silently granting states new power to disqualify federal candidates would turn that design on its head.
The Court also stressed the practical consequences: allowing each state to make its own Section 3 determination about a presidential candidate using different evidentiary rules and procedures would produce a chaotic patchwork of conflicting results — directly at odds with the principle that the president represents all voters in the nation. All nine justices agreed on this outcome, though three filed a separate opinion arguing the majority went unnecessarily far in addressing how any future federal enforcement must work.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
No state can use its own ballot rules or court proceedings to disqualify a federal candidate as an insurrectionist — that power belongs to Congress alone. The ruling immediately extinguished similar ballot challenges pending in other states during the 2024 primary season, and it means any future attempt to invoke Section 3 against a presidential candidate must run through Congress rather than state courts.
What changes now
Trump remains eligible to appear on state primary ballots, and similar state-court challenges around the country were immediately foreclosed by this ruling. Any future effort to enforce Section 3 against a federal candidate must come through Congress rather than state proceedings. Exactly how Congress may do so — and whether other federal mechanisms such as judicial enforcement remain available — was a question three justices said the majority improperly foreclosed, leaving those issues unresolved.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether Trump actually engaged in insurrection, whether Section 3 covers the presidency, or whether Congress could disqualify Trump or any other candidate through legislation. Three justices argued the majority also improperly foreclosed non-legislative federal enforcement of Section 3, a question this ruling leaves contested.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Barrett
Justice Barrett joined the parts of the opinion holding that states lack power to enforce Section 3 against presidential candidates, but said that single conclusion was all the Court needed to resolve this case. She criticized the majority for going further to address how federal enforcement of Section 3 must work, calling it unnecessary constitutional decisionmaking in the middle of a politically volatile election. She urged her colleagues to emphasize the Court's unanimous agreement on the outcome rather than their disagreements over reasoning.
Concurrence — Justice Sotomayor
The three justices agreed that Colorado could not remove a presidential candidate under Section 3, because federalism principles — specifically, the danger of a chaotic state-by-state patchwork for a national office — fully resolved the case. They objected to the majority going further to declare that only a specific type of congressional legislation can enforce Section 3, arguing this was an unnecessary ruling that foreclosed judicial enforcement and other federal mechanisms, effectively shielding alleged insurrectionists from future accountability in ways the case did not require.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment works as a disqualification penalty — it bars specific individuals from office rather than granting rights to everyone. That means some formal process is needed to determine which individuals it covers before the disqualification can be given effect, a point both Chief Justice Chase (writing in 1869) and the Colorado Supreme Court itself acknowledged.
- The Constitution gives Congress, through Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, the 'power to enforce' the Amendment's provisions 'by appropriate legislation.' Congress exercised this authority almost immediately after ratification by enacting the Enforcement Act of 1870, which created federal procedures to remove violators from office and made holding office in violation of Section 3 a federal crime. That history confirms Section 3 enforcement is Congress's domain.
- States do retain some power here: they have the traditional sovereign authority to set qualifications for their own officers and historically used Section 3 to disqualify people from state office after ratification. But powers over federal officers and candidates — who represent the entire nation, not just a single state — must be specifically delegated to states by the Constitution, not merely implied.
- Nothing in the Constitution delegates to states the power to enforce Section 3 against federal candidates. The Fourteenth Amendment restricts state authority rather than expanding it; reading it to silently grant states new power over federal candidates would invert the Amendment's entire design. The Elections and Electors Clauses, which let states run federal elections, provide no basis for such a delegation either.
- Allowing state-by-state Section 3 determinations about a presidential candidate would produce a chaotic patchwork: different states could apply different evidentiary standards, allow different evidence, and require different procedures — reaching conflicting judgments about the same candidate based on the same conduct. A president represents all voters in the nation, and a single candidate could end up eligible in some states but not others, potentially nullifying millions of votes.
- If states could bar federal candidates from the ballot under Section 3, Congress's express power to remove a Section 3 disqualification by a two-thirds vote would be effectively gutted: Congress would have to act before voting even began, or its amnesty decisions would come too late to matter. The Constitution cannot plausibly have delegated to states the authority to impose that kind of burden on a power the Constitution expressly gives Congress.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton (514 U.S. 779)
Reaffirmed that powers over federal officers' elections must be delegated to states, not merely reserved by them.
Reaffirms Anderson v. Celebrezze (460 U.S. 780)
Reaffirmed that state-imposed restrictions in presidential elections implicate a uniquely important national interest.