The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of former President Donald Trump in his appeal of the disqualification of his Colorado ballot.

The justices unanimously overturned the Colorado Supreme Court’s Dec. 19 decision to expel Trump from the state’s Republican primary because they found that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution disqualified Trump from holding public office again. .

Trump is the front-runner for the Republican nomination and will challenge Democratic President Joe Biden in the November 5 US presidential election.

His only remaining rival for the party nomination is former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.

Trump was also barred from voting in Maine and Illinois under the Fourteenth Amendment, but those decisions were put on hold pending the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Colorado case.

Mr. Trump’s qualifications are being challenged in court by six Colorado voters — four Republicans and two independents — who paint him as a threat to American democracy and seek to hold him accountable for the 2021 election. Responsibility for the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. by his supporters.

The plaintiffs are backed by the liberal Washington watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics.

The ruling comes on the eve of Super Tuesday, the day in the U.S. presidential primary cycle when most states hold party nominating contests. With lawsuits seeking to disqualify Trump pouring in across the country, it will be important for his candidacy to clear any hurdles appearing on the ballot in all 50 states.

The Supreme Court quickly resolved a Colorado ballot dispute, a timeline that contrasted with the court’s slow handling of Trump’s quest for immunity from criminal prosecution in a federal case in which he faced attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Failed accusations. Trump’s trial has been put on hold pending the outcome of the Supreme Court’s decision – which would be beneficial to his election rival Joe Biden.

In the Colorado dispute, the justices agreed to take the case just two days after Trump appealed, holding fast arguments and issuing written opinions in just over two months.

The judge in the immunity case last December rejected a request to expedite the issue before a lower court intervened, then agreed last week to take up the issue after a lower court ruling and set arguments for the end of April, longer Wire.

The court’s 6-3 conservative majority includes three Trump appointees. Not since the landmark Bush v. Gore decision have courts played such a central role in a presidential campaign. The case put the focus of the 2000 U.S. election dispute on Republican George W. Bush rather than Democrat Al Gore.

Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits any “officer of the United States” who takes an oath to “support the Constitution of the United States” and then “participates in insurrection or rebellion against the Constitution of the United States, or renders aid or comfort to the enemies of the United States.”

In an effort to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s 2020 election victory, Trump supporters attacked police, broke through barricades and flooded the Capitol. Trump delivered an incendiary speech to supporters beforehand, repeating his false claims of widespread voting fraud and telling them to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell.” He then rejected requests for hours to urge the mob to stop.

The 14th Amendment was ratified after the Civil War from 1861 to 1865, when Southern states that had allowed slavery rebelled against the U.S. government.

In ruling against Trump, the Colorado Supreme Court noted that “President Trump has created a general climate of political violence” and said he aided “the insurrectionists’ common and unlawful purpose of preventing the peaceful transfer of power in this country.”

The Supreme Court heard arguments on February 8. Trump’s lawyers argue that he is not bound by the disqualification language because the president is not an “official of the United States,” that courts cannot enforce the provision without congressional legislation and that what happened on January 6 was disgraceful ,criminal. Violent but not insurgent.

Many Republicans have decried the move to disqualify ballots as interference with the election, while supporters of the disqualification say holding Trump constitutionally responsible for the insurrection supports democratic values.

Additional reporting by Reuters