Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin noted there were high tempers on the Supreme Court after it ruled Monday that Colorado could not disqualify former President Trump from the ballot under the 14th Amendment.
“There was a paradox, about today, at The Supreme Court,” Toobin told CNN anchor John King on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” in a clip highlighted by Mediaite. “They were unanimous, which is, in controversial cases, unusual in this Supreme Court. However, there were some pissed off justices there, you could just tell from the paper the opinions were written on.”
“The three justices didn’t dissent — the three liberals — but they really went after the five for saying … for giving a roadmap, for how this law should be applied instead of just saying ‘What Colorado… did was wrong,’” he added.
His comments come after the high court ruled unanimously that the Centennial State could not bar former president from being on the primary ballot under the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause — which bars anyone who has taken an oath of office from engaging in a rebellion against the government.
Four Republican and two independent voters in Colorado — backed by watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) — filed a lawsuit last year seeking to remove Trump from the primary ballot. They argued in the filing that the former president’s actions surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, triggered his disqualification.
In its 9-0 ruling Monday, the court said states do not have unilateral authority to disqualify federal candidates from ballots, but five conservatives specified that the provision under the insurrection clause could only be enforced via Congress.
The three liberals on the court – Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan – and conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote a separate opinion, arguing that the majority went further than needed.
They said in the joint opinion that the majority improperly decided “novel constitutional questions to insulate this Court and [Trump] from future controversy.”
“In a sensitive case crying out for judicial restraint, it abandons that course,” the justices said of the majority.
Barrett wrote that the court “has settled a politically charged issue in the volatile season of a Presidential election. Particularly in this circumstance, writings on the Court should turn the national temperature down, not up.”
“For present purposes, our differences are far less important than our unanimity: All nine Justices agree on the outcome of this case. That is the message Americans should take home,” she added.
Trump called the ruling both “unifying and inspirational” in a statement following the news.
The historic decision by the Supreme Court Monday now preserves the ability of the Republican front-runner to seek a second presidential term.
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