Trump v. Anderson

Trump v. Anderson, 601 U.S. 100 (2024), is a U.S. Supreme Court case in which the Court unanimously held that states could not determine eligibility for federal office, including the presidency, under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. In December 2023, the Colorado Supreme Court had rejected then-former president Donald Trump's presidential eligibility on the basis of his actions during the January 6 Capitol attack, adhering to the Fourteenth Amendment disqualification theory. The case was known as Anderson v. Griswold in the Colorado state courts.

The Colorado Supreme Court held that Trump's actions before and during the attack constituted engagement in insurrection; their assertion is that Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment disqualifies presidential candidates who have engaged in insurrection against the United States. The Colorado Supreme Court's ruling in Anderson v. Griswold was the first time that a presidential candidate was disqualified from office in a state on the basis of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court stayed its decision until a ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court.

On January 5, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court granted Trump's petition for a writ of certiorari seeking review of the Colorado Supreme Court ruling in Anderson v. Griswold on an accelerated pace; oral arguments were held on February 8, 2024. On March 4, 2024, the Supreme Court issued a per curiam ruling reversing the Colorado Supreme Court decision. All nine justices held that an individual state cannot determine eligibility under Section 3 for federal office holders, and that such power is conferred exclusively to the federal government. A majority of the court also ruled the section to be non-justiciable, and that only Congress can enforce Section 3, i.e. the courts (federal or otherwise) cannot declare a candidate ineligible for office under Section 3 unless an Act of Congress explicitly grants them that power. Four justices disagreed with the latter ruling, and expressed concern in concurrences that this decision went further than needed.

On December 19, 2020, six weeks following his election loss, Trump urged his followers on Twitter to protest in Washington, D.C., on January 6, the day Congress was set to certify the results of the election, writing, "Be there, will be wild!" Over the course of the following weeks, Trump would repeat the January 6 date. Militant organizations and groups affiliated with the conspiracy theory QAnon formulated logistical plans to gather at the United States Capitol. In the lead up to January 6, Trump continued to repeat false claims about election results of various states including Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, and Arizona. On the morning of January 6, Trump gave a speech in the Ellipse, a park near the White House, and encouraged his followers to walk down to Pennsylvania Avenue to incite within Republicans the "kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country". Provoked by Trump, the mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol.

Section 3. No person shall ... hold any office, civil or military, under the United States ... who, having previously taken an oath ... as an officer of the United States ... 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. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

In August 2023, conservative legal scholars and Federalist Society members William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, in an article to be published in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, posited that Trump is ineligible to be president. Baude and Paulsen argue that Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment—a section that prevents individuals from holding office who, having "previously taken an oath ... to support the Constitution of the United States", have "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the United States—applies to Trump through his fraudulent electors plot and "specific encouragement" of January 6, including refusing to call in the National Guard, evidenced by the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack and his second federal indictment. According to Baude and Paulsen, states are given legal obligation and precedent to remove Trump from primary ballots under Article Two of the Constitution, which establishes presidential eligibility requirements. Baude and Paulsen concede, however, that the decision in Griffin's Case (1869) adopted a pragmatic, consequentialist interpretation of Section Three, contrary to their position. In an article to be published in the Texas Review of Law and Politics, law professors Josh Blackman and Seth Barrett Tillman responded to Baude and Paulsen, arguing against the basis for a Fourteenth Amendment disqualification of Trump. Experts who spoke with the Washington Post and op-eds published by the Washington Post, Bloomberg Opinion and the New York Times.

In March 2022, a district judge ruled that then-representative Madison Cawthorn, who had participated in the January 6 attack on the Capitol, could not be barred from the ballot as an insurrectionist due to the Amnesty Act of 1872. In May 2022, by which time Cawthorn had lost in the primary election, the ruling that the Amnesty Act applies was reversed on appeal. In September 2022, Couy Griffin, an Otero County, New Mexico commissioner, was barred from holding public office for life, his participation as the leader of the Cowboys for Trump group during the attack on the Capitol having been found to be an act of insurrection under Section 3.

On September 6, 2023, six voters filed a lawsuit in Colorado state district court invoking the Fourteenth Amendment disqualification theory. The petitioners included four Republican voters (including former state Senate Majority Leader Norma Anderson, the titular plaintiff, and former U.S. Representative Claudine Schneider) and two unaffiliated voters. The lawsuit asks for the court to prevent Trump from appearing on the state's Republican presidential primary. Jena Griswold is named as the respondent in her official capacity as Colorado Secretary of State, while Trump and the Colorado Republican State Central Committee are named as intervenors. The trial began on October 30 with Judge Sarah B. Wallace presiding. Wallace refused a request from Trump's lawyers to dismiss the case.