Naturally
Correct. States simply don’t have this power. The decision was unanimous for a reason.
*terms and conditions apply
Always has been. States have never had free reign to do anything they want. This is one of the things they cannot do.
For anyone wondering if the wording of the Constitution is unclear, this is the provision that constitutionally bars trump from office:
“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, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
Here is Article 2 section 1, referring to the office of the President of the United States:
“The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his office during the term of four years,…”
Trump engaged in insurrection, violating the oath of office he took. As such, he is constitutionally ineligible to run for office.
Supreme Cowards
I don’t like the guy, but I like even less the government deciding to take candidates off the ballot.
The opinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-719_19m2.pdf
We conclude that States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office. But States have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency.
To be fair, the government has always set criteria for being on the ballot. For example, to be US president you have to be at least 35, a natural citizen, and have live in the states for at least 14 years.
Not being an insurrectionist is also part of that criteria. We’ve just never had a presidential candidate that has needed us to consider that part of the constitution.
Time to violently storm the Supreme Court, then. After all, they approve.
Sorry, but this is absolutely a victory for democracy and what little structure our government still has. If the states were to be allowed to remove candidates from the ballot, you could kiss any chance of Democrat candidates showing up on red state ballots goodbye.
Except for the part where they punt to Congress as the sole arbiter of whether Trump engaged in insurrection. They absolutely know Congress won’t get off its collective ass to enforce, because it’s too broken to even pass a budget.
Call me old fashioned, but an outgoing president who falsely claims their challenger stole the election and incites their supporters to storm the capitol building should be barred from holding office again, Democrat or Republican.
I absolutely agree. But it’s up to Congress to actually do that. That’s the branch of government that has failed here.
States remove candidates routinely. It’s their constitutional right. Except with Trump for some reason.
Do you have any examples of that? I’m certainly no expert in this subject, so I’d love to know more.
This is a shit take. This ruling is not saying “Trump did nothing wrong”, this is specifically saying “States cannot unilaterally decide to remove federal election candidates from ballots”, which I completely agree with. As others have noted, it would open the doors to so much bullshit if this were allowed.
The SC could come out tomorrow and say “We’re disqualifying Trump”, this doesn’t preclude that.
States have always had that power. Whether its age, naturalization, or oath-breaking, it’s never been up to the federal government to decide disqualification.
Now they do not, as outlined by the supreme court this morning. You can disagree with the ruling all you want, but that doesn’t make the premise that “the SC has no problem with insurrectionist behavior!” any less stupid. It’s a fallacious premise.
it’s never been up to the federal government to decide disqualification.
It’s up to Congress to decide if someone is guilty of federal insurrection, not the states.
Edit: I see the downvotes, but I don’t see replies. I thought this was a place for reasoned debate, but it’s as bad as r/politics where anything regarding the orange man is concerned.
Arguably states unilaterally removing a candidate from the ballot is a major paving stone on the road to the civil war, when Lincoln won because of the split pro slave vote the south blew a gasket because it only just hit them then that everyone else had enough electors among them to ignore the south completely.
The idea that we have to let an insurrectionist campaign and win before disqualifying them is far worse. It would instantly lead to massive protests and violence from whichever party had that happen to them. If you want to avoid civil war then denial must happen early if at all.
States remove federal election candidates for eligibility reasons all the time. Trump is yet again getting special treatment.
[citation needed]
List one federal candidate a state successfully removed (that wasn’t convicted in a federal court, or died before the election.)
Edit: I see the downvotes, but I don’t see a name. I thought this was a place for reasoned debate, but it’s as bad as r/politics where anything regarding the orange man is concerned.
On the other hand, I could definitely see a bunch of red-controlled states deciding to remove Biden (or future Dem candidates) for whatever bullshit reason in the future, so while this ruling isn’t necessarily consistent with current practice it at least doesn’t open the door to that.
Except that R’s are already pretty cool with being inconsistent about what is our isn’t allowed, which is how we got certain members of the SC in the first place…
It’s not a State Law they’re using to remove him. It’s federal election laws. It’s in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. They even specifically discussed if a President should have an exception and decided it did not. The Supreme Court is choosing NOT to enforce the US Federal Constitution!
In this case, I don’t disagree with their decisions and neither did the moderate justices.
This prevents all of the heavily gerrymandered red States from pulling Biden from the ballot as well.
And if they ruled in favor of pulling Trump from the ballot, you can bet your ass that Biden will be gone from every red and swing state ballot too. Possibly more than we would be able to get Trump pulled from.
The thing is, there being no reason wouldn’t stop them from declaring that they have a reason. They’d abuse the hell out of it. No one is saying there is a justification for disqualifying Biden, just that a lot of GOP folks would do it anyway.
See when they decided they needed some sort of revenge impeachment and impeached without any particular reason.
Guess we really are going the route of states ignoring federal rulings and laws. This might get scary in the next few years.
That isn’t at all what this is about. This is asserting the inability for individual states to make rulings on federal matters. This is a good thing. It’s not states’ place to be ruling on federal cases. Those rulings need to come from the federal level.
With every ruling the SC makes more and more states are setting themselves against the federal government. It’s becoming clear this union is not working at this point and it’s seeming inevitable that sometime in the near future we’re going to see more states than just Texas speaking of breaking away. Probably from more sides of the political spectrum and auth-right too
Tenth Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Right, and per the opinion, Amendment 14 sections 3 and 5 specifically take rights away from the States to delegate for the federal government.