The Supreme Court just gave insurrectionists a free pass to overthrow democracy

The US Supreme Court’s reversal of a landmark court decision in Colorado will keep Donald Trump on the state’s presidential election ballots and on the ballots in a handful of other states where he was also disqualified from the presidency under a constitutional clause barring insurrectionists from office.

It was a unanimous 9-0 decision from the justices, on its face. They agreed that individual states can’t unilaterally remove candidates for federal office from their ballots. But that’s about as far as they got to being on the same page.

Instead, what emerged was a 5-4 conservative majority decision that went far beyond that of the liberal minority, stating that only Congress can decide whether insurrectionists are disqualified from federal office. Any candidate who tries to overthrow the government can still get elected to the presidency – just so long as they have the support of the controlling political party in Congress.

In response, a seething opinion from the court’s three liberal justices warned that conservative justices have set a precedent that “attempts to insulate all alleged insurrectionists from future challenges to their holding federal office”. Outside of criminal courts, accountability for elected officials who “engaged” in the attack on the US Capitol on January 6 2021 – fuelled by then-president Trump’s bogus narrative of fraud and “rigged” elections – would be virtually impossible as long as Republican lawmakers hold sway.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment – among civil rights amendments enacted in the volatile aftermath of the US Civil War – included a broadly written clause first aimed at preventing Confederates from returning to a government they were in rebellion against. Section 3 bars anyone who