On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reversed the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to bar former President Donald Trump from appearing on that state’s ballots under Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, as only Congress, and not any individual states, have the authority to enforce that constitutional provision.
The Trump-hating co-hosts of ABC’s “The View” begrudgingly acknowledged that the high court’s ruling was the correct decision, but still expressed their displeasure at the result and accused the Supreme Court of going further than necessary to resolve the question under consideration, Fox News reported.
In doing so, the co-hosts echoed the complaints of the three liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagen, and Ketanji Brown Jackson — and, to a lesser extent, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who authored separate opinions that concurred in the judgment concerning Colorado’s actions but argued that the majority went too far in outlining how Section 3 can be enforced in the future.
The decision was correct, but …
“They are saying the Supreme Court went too far here because they answered a question that wasn’t before them,” co-host Sunny Hostin lamented about the concurring opinions that seemingly doubled as dissents. “The only question that was before this court was, can a state do this? Instead, what they did was they insulated all alleged insurrectionists from future challenges to their holding federal office.”
“I have far too much hope that the court would be united in this and not overstep in favor of Donald Trump, and I think what we saw was a court where justices that behaved in a partisan manner and that disappointed me,” she added.
Co-host Sara Haines seemed to agree and said of the ruling that returned Trump to the Colorado ballot, “It didn’t surprise me. I started to gain faith, as Sunny would tell us, like, this is going to get him.” She then added, “But seeing it, I now get the chaos which would ensue and I think it’s important when you don’t like the outcome, which I’m not saying I don’t, but that you look at the states that you would disagree with, and what they could do in turn.”
Acknowledgments obscured by hatred of Trump
Co-host Ana Navarro agreed that presidential eligibility “needs to be up to the voters,” as allowing individual states to decide would be “opening up a Pandora’s box,” but nevertheless argued that conservative Justice Clarence Thomas should have recused himself. Likewise, critical former Trump aide and co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin suggested that while the court’s ruling was correct, it was not a “welcome one” for her and others.
It was co-host Whoopi Goldberg, however, who most openly expressed her disdain for how the court’s decision helped Trump, as she asserted, “The thing that bothers me about this, and I know it’s probably the right decision, but I don’t like that we’ve normalized this man.”
“It has really irritated the poo out of me that we have normalized him and his bad behavior,” she added. “I get that the law says, listen, it would be really rough and it should be the Congress that makes these decisions, and yet that’s not how we have been acting.”
Court says only Congress, and not the individual states, has the power to disqualify federal candidates
At issue here was the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to bar former President Trump from the state’s ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which was passed and ratified in the wake of the Civil War and was intended to prohibit former Confederate officers and politicians from holding federal or state offices if, after previously taking an oath to support the U.S. Constitution, subsequently “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
The Colorado court had cited Trump’s alleged incitement and involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot of 2021, a supposed “insurrection or rebellion,” as its justification for disqualifying Trump from appearing on the state’s ballots — even though Trump has never been charged with, much less convicted of, any such crimes for which there are federal statutes on the books.
In the unsigned majority opinion, the Supreme Court ruled that Section 5 of the 14th Amendment granted sole authority to Congress to legislatively enforce the Section 3 provisions, at least so far as federal offices were concerned, and that a “patchwork” of “conflicting state outcomes concerning the same candidate” would inevitably arise and negatively impact future elections if individual states were authorized to make such decisions.
“An evolving electoral map could dramatically change the behavior of voters, parties, and States across the country, in different ways and at different times. The disruption would be all the more acute — and could nullify the votes of millions and change the election result — if Section 3 enforcement were attempted after the Nation has voted,” the majority stated. “Nothing in the Constitution requires that we endure such chaos — arriving at any time or different times, up to and perhaps beyond the Inauguration.”
However, though they concurred that Colorado’s move was unauthorized, the three liberal jurists complained that the conservative majority violated the ideal of “judicial restraint” and went further than necessary to not only “insulate this Court and petitioner from future controversy” but also to close “the door on other potential means of federal enforcement” of Section 3’s disqualification provisions.
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Author: Ben Marquis
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