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U.S. voters could soon know whether former President Donald Trump can be kept off the ballot in this year’s presidential election.
How soon? As soon as today, according to an election-law expert contacted by MarketWatch. The Supreme Court heard arguments over whether the former president’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol disqualifies him from the presidency.
“We may get a fairly quick decision, especially if the justices plan to say Trump can be disqualified by a state,” said Richard Hasen, who teaches at UCLA Law.
The court sounded broadly skeptical of efforts to kick Trump off the 2024 ballot, reports the Associated Press, as justices today for the first time dealt with a constitutional provision adopted after the Civil War to prevent former officeholders who “engaged in insurrection” from coming back to power.
A decision “could come any time between [today] and the end of June in theory,” Hasen told MarketWatch by email, noting that the court set an expedited briefing and argument section.
Now read: Can Trump be on the ballot? It’s the Supreme Court’s biggest election test since Bush v. Gore.
Colorado’s highest court determined that Trump — now the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination — incited the riot in the nation’s capital and is ineligible to be president again as a result and should not be on the ballot for the state’s primary on March 5.
Both conservative and liberal justices raised questions during arguments about whether Trump can be disqualified from being president again because of his efforts to undo his loss in the 2020 election.
Trump’s lawyers have argued that he didn’t participate in or direct any of the attack on the Capitol.
The case heard today is the Supreme Court’s most direct involvement in a presidential election since Bush v. Gore, in 2000. That case was decided one day after oral arguments, and effectively handed that year’s election to Republican George W. Bush.
The Associated Press contributed
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