A legal petition was filed in Colorado in September, seeking to prevent the inclusion of former President Donald Trump on the state’s electoral ballot for 2024 through the application of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.
The matter was reported on at the time:
….Six voters in Colorado have filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Denver to disqualify the former president from being included on the ballot if he wins the Republican presidential nomination.
This move is part of a larger push to use Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to keep Trump from winning the presidency.
Six voters in Colorado filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to remove former President Donald Trump from the state’s election ballots because of his role in the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.
Their suit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court in Denver, contends that Trump should be disqualified from running in future elections under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which states that no person shall hold any office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” after having taken an oath to support the Constitution.
The group called on the court to remove Trump from the 2024 ballot and declare that it would be “improper” and “a breach or neglect of duty” for Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, to allow his name to appear on any future primary or general election ballots.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and several law firms filed the lawsuit on behalf of the six voters — four Republicans and two unaffiliated.
A court in Colorado issued a decision on Friday, rejecting the legal team representing Donald Trump’s second attempt to argue for the dismissal of the case.
In her 24-page ruling, Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace rejected Trump’s argument that matters of ballot eligibility are limited to Congress, not the courts. Wallace also opposed Trump’s argument that state election officials cannot invoke Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
“The Court holds that states can, and have, applied Section 3 pursuant to state statues without federal enforcement legislation,” Wallace wrote.
Wallace’s ruling comes just days before the trial is slated to start Oct. 30.
The initial argument put forth by Trump’s legal representative, which was lodged in October, was predicated on the First Amendment’s constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression.
Earlier this month, Wallace rejected a separate attempt by Trump’s legal team to dismiss the case, ruling that his objections on free-speech grounds did not apply.
At present, the subject will continue to fall under the purview of individual state jurisdictions, as analogous legal proceedings advance through the judicial systems of Michigan and Minnesota. A prior incident that transpired in October involved the United States Supreme Court deciding against the petition to exclude Donald Trump from the presidential ballot on the basis of the 14th Amendment. The legal proceedings were instigated by an exceedingly obscure Republican candidate for the presidency in the 2024 election. We shall ensure that you are consistently informed about the development of the pending cases.