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March 04, 2024
Supreme Court Unanimously Strikes Down the Colorado Supreme Court's Juvenile Internet Trolling Disguised as a "Judicial Decision"
The Court ruled 9-0 that Colorado had no power to exclude Trump from the ballot.
Court decisions are made up of two big parts: the ruling, and the opinion. The ruling dispenses with the issue directly in front of the Court. The "instant dispute," as they say. The matter right here in front of us. Here, that ruling is that the Colorado cannot exclude Trump from the ballot.
The opinion explains the reasons for the ruling, and announces how all similar cases in the future will be decided (or, at least, what the structure will be for deciding them).
The Justices were unanimous on the ruling, but the liberals did not join the majority opinion. The majority opinion still rules. But three Justices didn't join it.
Six Justices -- the five "conservatives," plus Roberts -- voted for an opinion stating that Congress alone has the power to announce who is disabled from holding federal office due to "insurrectionary" acts. Presumably Congress would actually pass a law stating that certain persons named in the law were insurrectionists and not eligible to hold federal office.
The three liberal Justices claimed that that goes to far, and that a state could rule that Trump (or any other office-seeker) was barred from seeking federal office if that person had been convicted under the federal law of "insurrection."
That's not a crazy position to hold, but the justices in the majority probably resisted it, because they know the left is just spamming out one lawfare case after another, and if they left any wiggle room for another series of lawsuits to exclude Trump from the ballot, they'd leap to do that, and we'd have another nine months of actions to bar Trump from the ballot and a bunch more Supreme Court hearings on the constitutionality of these lawsuits.
So the majority said, "No, that's enough of this bullshit. It ends now."
See Ed Morrissey for some quotes from the majority and minority opinions.
Here's Amy Coney Barrett, summing up:
Particularly in this circumstance, writings on the Court should turn the national temperature down, not up. For present purposes, our differences are far less important than our unanimity: All nine Justices agree on the outcome of this case. That is the message Americans should take home.
Meanwhile, some reactions, and some failed predictions from the far left:
Ron Coleman
@RonColeman
PER CURIAM, bitches.
"Per Curiam" means "by the court;" no single justice is writing it. A "per curiam" opinion represents the entire court.
The ruling here is "per curiam," as it's unanimous.
It's certainly gratifying that @dhillonlaw client Donald Trump won the Colorado case before the Supreme Court. (I was not part of the superb SCOTUS advocacy, but I was very involved in DJT's challenge to Colorado's actions which SCOTUS upheld.)
HAVING SAID THIS,
It is no less gratifying to witness the unanimous bench slap delivered to all the wise-ass academic, corporate media and Twitter constitutional law experts
J.D. Vance
@JDVance1
Why did so many law professors fall for a garbage legal theory the Supreme Court just struck down unanimously?
Because our "expert class" has long been a pile of glittering mediocrities and on top of that, they all had untreated (and in fact reinforced and amplified) nervous breakdowns in 2016. They're fucking crazy in addition to being incompetent.