5 takeaways in Supreme Court’s ruling to keep Trump on 2024 ballot

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that former President Donald Trump cannot be kept off the 2024 presidential ballot in Colorado — or any other state.

The justices voted 9-0 that Colorado did not have the right to act on its own to bar Trump for violating the 14th Amendment’s so-called insurrection clause.

But they split along ideological lines about the legal meaning of the ruling and what should happen if Trump would be found to have led an insurrection by inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Here are five takeaways:

Trump will be on the ballot in 2024 everywhere

All nine Supreme Court justices agreed that individual states like Colorado do not have the right to bar Trump from the Republican presidential primary or general election ballots, assuming he is the GOP nominee.

A five-judge majority of the court also further ruled that only Congress could pass legislation barring an accused insurrectionist from becoming president.

But such legislation will be unlikely passed anytime soon given the split power grab in Congress, with the House led by Republicans and Democrats leading the Senate.

States cannot use 14th Amendment to bar candidates for federal offices

All the justices agreed that individual states should not be permitted to decide whether a presidential candidate is ineligible for office.

The unanimous decision said allowing states to do so would create a “chaotic patchwork” of rules for electing the person to serve America’s highest office.

The justices did not address the fact that such a patchwork already exists when it comes to ballot access for third party and independent candidates, not to mention voting rules like those covering voting by mail and barring felons from voting.

Four justices dispute conclusion that only Congress enforce insurrection clause in future elections

The court’s three liberal justices issued a fiery dissent disputing the five-judge majority’s contention that the only way for a candidate accused of being an insurrectionist to be barred from the ballot would be for Congress to pass legislation.

Their concurring opinion suggested that the Supreme Court could bar a presidential candidate under the 14th Amendment if that person had been categorically found to have participated in an insurrection, perhaps by his or her own admission.

The liberals also slammed the court for going beyond what was required to decide the matter at hand, a key judicial principle that the top court’s conservative majority has regularly invoked in recent rulings, including its controversial decision to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion.

Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett agreed with the legal point made by the three liberals, but declined to join their opinion. She decried the “stridency” of their concurring opinion.

Ruling sidesteps whether Trump led insurrection on Jan. 6

Every one knows the ruling is about Trump.

But neither the unanimous ruling of the court nor the concurring opinions actually mention the former president by name.

That could be because the Supreme Court is generally not called upon to determine the facts of a particular case.

And in the Colorado case, the state supreme court found that Trump’s actions amounted to inciting an insurrection.

So there was no need for any of the justices to opine on whether they agreed with that assessment, or not.

Few tea leaves for Trump presidential immunity case

Some legal eagles believe the Supreme Court might be planning a so-called “grand bargain” on Trump: allowing him access to the ballot but refusing to block his criminal trials.

The ruling gave few signs of such a deal, which would involve rejecting his plea for blanket presidential immunity against prosecution, a very different legal issue.

A possible bread crumb about the immunity decision could be gleaned from the timing of the ballot decision, which was issued a month after oral arguments.

If the justices act with similar speed in the immunity case, they could issue a decision by Memorial Day after hearing arguments in late April.

That timing would permit a trial to start by Labor Day in Trump’s federal election interference case, if the court rejects Trump’s appeal.