US supreme court to hear appeal of Colorado ruling removing Trump from state ballot

The US supreme court will hear Donald Trump’s appeal of the Colorado ruling that said he should be removed from the state ballot under the 14th amendment to the US constitution, for inciting an insurrection.

The court issued a brief order on the matter on Friday, setting up a dramatic moment in American political history.

The case will be argued on 8 February. As the Republican presidential primary will then be well under way, with Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada having voted – and as Trump has also been disqualified from the ballot in Maine, a ruling he has appealed in state court – a quick decision is expected.

The Colorado primary is set for 5 March. The state government must begin mailing ballots to overseas voters on 20 January and to all other voters between 12 and 16 February. The ruling suspending Trump is stayed, however, as long as there is an appeal ongoing at the US supreme court.

In the year of a high-stakes presidential election, the case is set to move rapidly. Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, said that with “oral argument set for 8 February, the appeal will be extremely expedited … Thus, briefs will probably be due as soon as possible, maybe [in] a week or 10 days for each side.”

The 14th amendment was approved after the civil war, meant to bar from office supporters of the rebel Confederate states. But it has rarely been used. Cases against Trump were mounted after he was impeached but acquitted by the Senate over the January 6 Capitol attack staged by his supporters, then swiftly came to dominate the Republican presidential primary, maintaining the lie that his defeat in 2020 was the result of electoral fraud.

Fourteenth-amendment challenges to Trump in other states have either