Supreme Court skeptical of Trump ballot disqualification by Colorado

The Supreme Court on Thursday strongly questioned a ruling by Colorado’s top court that barred Donald Trump from the state’s Republican presidential primary ballot.

A number of Supreme Court justices, among them two liberal justices, were skeptical of the rationale and process that the Colorado Supreme Court used to disqualify Trump from that ballot.

“I think that the question that you have to confront is why a single state should decide who gets to be president of the United States,” Justice Elena Kagan, one of those liberals, told a lawyer for Colorado voters who sought Trump’s disqualification.

She and other justices expressed concern about a lack of consistency across states in which some ban a federal candidate, while others allow the same candidate to remain on their ballots.

Oral arguments in the case, where Trump is seeking a reversal of the Colorado ban, ended after about two hours. It is not clear when the U.S. Supreme Court will issue its ruling.

Jason Murray, the lawyer for the Colorado voters, told the justices that Trump disqualified himself from becoming president again because he engaged in insurrection in his attempt to remain in the White House after losing the 2020 election.

“We are here because, for the first time since the War of 1812, our nation’s capital came under violent assault,” said Murray.

“For the first time in history, the attack was incited by a sitting president of the United States to disrupt the peaceful transfer of presidential power by engaging in insurrection against the Constitution,” Murray said.

“President Trump disqualified himself from public office,” the attorney said. As we heard earlier, President Trump’s main argument is that this Court should create a special exemption to section three that would apply to him and to him alone.”

But Murray was pressed by several…