Trump v. Anderson

Summary

A unanimous Supreme Court reversed the Colorado Supreme Court's order excluding former President Trump from the 2024 Republican primary ballot, holding that the Constitution makes Congress, not the States, responsible for enforcing Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment against federal officeholders and candidates. While States may disqualify persons from state office under Section 3, nothing in the Constitution delegates to them power to enforce that disqualification against federal candidates: the Amendment assigns enforcement to Congress through Section 5, the Elections and Electors Clauses do not implicitly confer it, and history, congressional supremacy, and federalism confirm the conclusion—especially because state-by-state Presidential enforcement would risk a chaotic, nonuniform patchwork. Justice Barrett concurred in part and in the judgment, urging the Court decide no more than that States lack power to enforce Section 3 against Presidential candidates; Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson concurred only in the judgment, objecting that the majority unnecessarily resolved novel questions about how federal enforcement of Section 3 must proceed.