Will the Supreme Court keep Donald Trump on 2024 ballots? Here’s what to expect

Did Donald Trump “engage” in insurrection? And if he did, can he be kicked off the presidential ballot? Or should that decision be left up to Congress?

These are the major constitutional questions surrounding Mr Trump’s presidential campaign, including whether he is immune from prosecution for crimes connected to the January 6 attack and if his name can beremoved from ballots because of them, that the US Supreme Court could soon settle.

On Thursday, the nation’s highest court will consider whether Colorado election officials can remove Mr Trump from the state’s ballots in 2024, after the state’s top court disqualified him from the presidency under the US Constitution’s “insurrection” clause.

The case underscores the outsized role that courtrooms and Mr Trump’s mountain of criminal and civil cases have played in his campaign for the White House – a campaign that baselessly casts the 91 criminal charges, fraud lawsuits and sexual abuse and defamation claims against him as evidence of a conspiracy to keep him away from the presidency.

An historic case in front of the high court’s conservative supermajority – where three justices of the justices were appointed by the former president – also arrives as the Supreme Court faces questions about its own legitimacy and ethics obligations, following a wave of reports revealing some of the justices’ ties to powerful donors and special interests, including potential interference in the 2020 election.

The case hinges on the interpretation of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which reads that “no person” who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution can hold any office, “civil or military, under the United States,” if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same”.

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