As you may have heard by now, the Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday said Donald Trump is disqualified from being president again and therefore can’t be on the state’s primary ballot. But despite that stark ruling, it’s entirely possible Trump will nonetheless appear on the ballot.
How, you might wonder, could that be?
That’s due in part to a feature of Tuesday’s ruling that includes what’s known as a “stay,” meaning a pause on the decision taking effect.
The bottom line is that the state high court hasn’t exactly kept Trump off the ballot.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold needs to certify the 2024 presidential primary ballot by Jan. 5. Mindful of that deadline and the prospect of U.S. Supreme Court review, the state high court not only stayed its ruling until Jan. 4, but said that if Trump seeks U.S. Supreme Court review before the stay expires, then the pause remains in place — and Griswold would have to list Trump on the primary ballot — until the U.S. Supreme Court potentially changes that calculus.
To underscore that point, to be on the primary ballot, all Trump has to do is ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case before the Jan. 4 stay deadline otherwise expires. That’s regardless of what the U.S. justices ultimately do with the appeal, and they have discretion over whether and when to take it up. Trump vowed Tuesday to swiftly appeal the state ruling, and if he does so, that will further keep the decision from taking effect beyond Jan. 4, absent sooner U.S. Supreme Court intervention. So, the bottom line is that the state high court hasn’t exactly kept Trump off the ballot. Rather, it said he’s disqualified, and the consequence of that disqualification is keeping him off the ballot, but that ruling hasn’t taken effect. What happens next will hinge at least partly on the U.S. Supreme Court, where all bets are off. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for weekly updates on the top legal stories, including news from the Supreme Court, the Donald Trump cases and more.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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