By MARK SHERMAN
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court sounds broadly skeptical of efforts to kick former President Donald Trump off the 2024 ballot.
In arguments ticking past 90 minutes Thursday, both conservative and liberal justices raised questions of whether Trump can be disqualified from being president again because of his efforts to undo his loss in the 2020 election, ending with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Concerns included whether Congress must act before states can invoke a constitutional provision that was adopted after the Civil War to prevent former officeholders who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office again. There also were questions about whether the president is covered by the provision.
Without such congressional legislation, Justice Elena Kagan was among several justices who wanted to know “why a single state should decide who gets to be president of the United States.”
Eight of the nine justices suggested that they were open to at least some of the arguments made by Jonathan Mitchell, Trump’s lawyer at the Supreme Court. Trump could win his case if the court finds just one of those arguments persuasive.
Only Justice Sonia Sotomayor sounded like she might vote to uphold the Colorado Supreme Court ruling that found that Trump “engaged in insurrection” and is ineligible to be president. The state court ruled Trump should not be on the ballot for the state’s Republican primary on March 5.
There was little talk of whether Trump actually “engaged in insurrection” following the 2020 election, though Mitchell argued that the Capitol riot was not an insurrection and, even if it was, Trump did not participate.
The case marks the first time the justices are considering Section 3 of the 14th amendment.
It sets up precisely the kind of case that the court likes to avoid, one in which it is the final arbiter of a political dispute.
Chief Justice John Roberts worried that a ruling against Trump would…
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