A hearing at the United States Supreme Court gripped the country in early February, as lawyers for Colorado were defending a decision there to exclude Donald Trump’s name from ballot papers in the general election due in November.
Despite the media's restricted access inside the court, the case took top billing on news channels and across social media because it could affect the former president’s bid to return to the White House.
The case details were widely debated in the run-up to the hearing: Trump is accused of sedition over the 6 January disorder in Washington, when his supporters marched on the Capitol in an attempt to prevent certification of the results of the last presidential election, which Trump lost.
However, when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on that fateful day, few could predict that this would lead to a court case that could prevent the former American president from running again.
Colorado — which has leaned toward the Democratic Party for two decades — argues that the incident is enough to remove Trump from the state ballot.
The legal means for this are grounded in the third clause of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, ratified in 1868, three years after the American Civil War ended in victory for the northern states of the union.
It was designed to disqualify officials in the southern states – which had seceded from the Union and declared independence, leading to the Civil War – from standing for election. The clause targets those who broke oaths to uphold the US and its Constitution from running in elections.
The Supreme Court’s looming ruling will have implications for the political process, from which the top judicial branch of government usually stands apart.
