The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that Donald Trump can remain on the presidential primary ballot in Colorado, handing the former president an important legal victory as he mounts another bid for the White House.
The unanimous decision on Monday overturned a ruling by Colorado’s highest court that found the former president was ineligible to hold office because he had engaged in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
The ruling came a day before Super Tuesday when Colorado will join 15 states and one area voting in the Republican presidential primary. With Trump ahead of his party, this year’s campaign for the White House will likely be a rematch between him and President Joe Biden.
The court wrote that states may have the power to disqualify individuals who hold or run for state office. However, they did not have the authority under the U.S. Constitution to enforce a constitutional provision that Colorado used to disqualify Trump from “holding federal offices, particularly the presidency,” the justices said in an unsigned Written in the decision.
In a social media post following the decision, Trump said: “BIG WIN FOR AMERICA!!!”.
He also praised the decision in a statement from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. “You can’t take somebody out of the race. The voters can take a person out of the race very quickly, but the court shouldn’t do that and the Supreme Court saw that very well,” Trump told reporters.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit legal watchdog that represents voters who challenged Trump in lower courts in Colorado, said Monday that the high court “failed to meet this moment.”