Colorado’s Supreme Court disqualified Trump from the primary ballot. Could a similar ruling come down in Pa?

The Colorado Supreme Court delivered a surprise decision in an already unpredictable presidential election cycle Tuesday, ruling that former President Donald Trump is disqualified from appearing on the state’s primary ballot.

Trump’s lawyers have said they will appeal, and the ruling will likely go to the U.S. Supreme Court for an unprecedented determination. The central question: Can states ban a presidential candidate from the ballot under a clause in the 14th Amendment that prohibits insurrectionists from holding public office?

Similar legal challenges against Trump have been filed in a dozen other states, including Pennsylvania, but Colorado’s Supreme Court was the first to rule on the matter. The court there, which has a liberal majority, ruled 4-3 that Trump engaged in an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, and is thus ineligible to hold any public office.

The U.S. Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, could reverse the ruling, which would have a trickle-down effect for many similar lawsuits pending in other states around the country.

In Pennsylvania one case has already stalled out, but more challenges could follow. And a state senator on Tuesday called for the secretary of state or the attorney general to move to remove Trump from the ballot here.

Here’s what to know about the Colorado ruling and a similar effort in Pennsylvania:

The Colorado Supreme Court, with justices all appointed by Democratic governors, ruled that Trump is ineligible to return to the White House under the Constitution’s insurrection clause. That clause, initially intended to keep Confederates from returning to government after the Civil War, bars anyone who swore an oath to “support” the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against it from holding public office.

Trump’s defense attorneys had argued he could not be held personally responsible for the insurrection led by his supporters. They also noted that the 14th Amendment provision only names “officers,” including senators, presidential electors, and vice president, but didn’t name the presidency.

In Colorado a liberal watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, filed the lawsuit on behalf of six Colorado voters.

Trump could still appear on the ballot in Colorado. The deadline to print ballots for the state’s March 5 presidential primary is Jan. 5, and the Colorado court has stayed its decision until Jan 4. or until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the case — whichever comes first. Colorado officials say the issue must be settled by the time the state needs to finalize its primary ballots.

The Colorado Republican Party has said it might hold a caucus instead of a primary to ensure Trump’s supporters can vote for him.

In 2020, Trump lost Colorado by 13 points. It’s not a state on his map to victory, but if more parties in other states — particularly must-win states like Pennsylvania — follow suit and the U.S. Supreme Court upholds Colorado’s decision, the future of his candidacy could be put into question.

Cases have also been filed in New Hampshire, Michigan, Arizona, and Minnesota.

David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR), said the Colorado decision is unlikely to impact cases already pending before other state courts, but its outcome could have a big impact on the presidential election in those states.

“It’s crucial for all Americans that the issue of Donald Trump’s eligibility be resolved as soon as possible,” Becker said. “That’s particularly true for the Republican Party who needs to know if it has a qualified nominee, for election officials who need to know whether to put his name on the ballot, and finally for all the voters who need to know who their choices are.”

In August, John Anthony Castro, a Texas man running a long-shot campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, filed lawsuits in several states seeking to bar Trump from primary ballots using a similar argument that the former president was an insurrectionist.

But the case didn’t go far in Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court kicked the case to the state Supreme Court, which in October denied Castro’s application to be heard, effectively ending the case.

While Castro made a similar argument to the group in Colorado, he was a much different plaintiff: He isn’t a Pennsylvania Republican voter and thus had less legal standing than the group that sued in Colorado.

Castro, 39, also didn’t appear to have a lawyer actively working on the case. While he has described himself as an attorney on his campaign website, he is not licensed to practice law. Trump also hadn’t yet filed nomination petitions in Pennsylvania when he filed the suit.

The Colorado ruling could now pave the way for someone else to try and make a real challenge to Trump here, election lawyer Adam Bonin predicted.

Any registered Pennsylvania Republican voter has the legal right to challenge Trump’s qualifications for office, said Bonin, who largely works with Democratic candidates and said he will not be getting involved in the issue himself.

“The architects of the Reconstruction Amendments — America’s second founding — understood how dangerous it would be to allow back into government those people who had demonstrated through their actions that they had rejected the Constitution and the rule of law,” Bonin said. “Donald Trump has demonstrated both before and especially since the 2020 election that he is such a person and therefore unworthy of the office, and the Colorado Supreme Court’s analysis of these issues is thorough and serious.”

While a challenge to Trump’s candidacy could come in Pennsylvania, the state courts here might wait for the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision before acting.

Democrats have a 5-2 majority on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court since Dan McCaffery won a November election.

State Sen. Art Haywood (D., Philadelphia and Montgomery) on Wednesday afternoon called on Secretary of State Al Schmidt to remove Trump from the ballot given the findings by the Colorado Supreme Court. Haywood also said the attorney general’s office could file a lawsuit to remove Trump.

“I have many constituents in my district who ask me, ‘How can a former president who engaged in insurrection be on the ballot?’” he said, noting election integrity is an issue for members of both parties.

Schmidt’s office said in a statement that the secretary didn’t have the unilateral ability to make such a move. The attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

While observers have noted the bar for the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold Colorado’s ruling will likely be very high, even some conservative legal minds have written opinions in agreement with the Colorado ruling.

In an article written for The University of Pennsylvania Law Review earlier this year, prominent conservative law professors William Baude and Michael Paulsen wrote that Trump must be barred from the ballot due to the insurrectionist clause in the 14th Amendment.

The clause reads:

“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, 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.”

“Taking Section Three seriously means excluding from present or future office those who sought to subvert lawful government authority under the Constitution in the aftermath of the 2020 election,” they wrote.

J. Michael Luttig, a conservative former federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals, gave a similar opinion in an article in The Atlantic this summer.

Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt slammed the ruling Tuesday as “more than a political attack on President Donald Trump — it’s an attack on the Republican Party and an attack on the very fabric of America.” She called on Trump’s GOP opponents and President Joe Biden to speak out against it.

Trump’s opponents have done just that.

“I will tell you that I don’t think Donald Trump needs to be president,” former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said. “But I will beat him fair and square. We don’t need to have judges making these decisions, we need voters to make these decisions.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said: “The Left invokes ‘democracy’ to justify its use of power, even if it means abusing judicial power to remove a candidate from the ballot based on spurious legal grounds.”

Even Trump’s most vocal GOP opponent, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, said while campaigning in New Hampshire that he thought Trump “should be prevented from being the President … by the voters of this country,” not by a court.

This article contains information from the Associated Press.