UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo discusses the growing legal battles surrounding former President Trump's candidacy on 'Your World.'

The Colorado Supreme Court issued a blockbuster decision on Tuesday blocking former President Donald Trump from the 2024 election ballot. It held that the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which barred Confederate rebels from ever holding federal office again, applied to Trump because he had attempted to block the peaceful transfer of power on January 6, 2021. The U.S. Supreme Court should reverse Colorado’s mistake, which would draw the courts even deeper into supervising our presidential elections, and allow the voters to decide for themselves Trump’s responsibility for the attack on the Capitol that day.

Colorado’s Supreme Court is the first court to bar Trump from the ballot on the theory that the former president falls within the 14th Amendment’s ban on insurrectionists from holding office again. The Colorado Court, however, erred by finding that the constitutional provision applies to a former president as someone who allegedly participated in a rebellion. It also mistakenly held that the 14th Amendment prohibits any former rebels from running for president. The Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court can follow the clear text, structure, and history of the U.S. Constitution, and find Trump eligible to be elected president.

Article II of the Constitution lists only three qualifications for the presidency. A president must be "a natural born Citizen," he or she must be at least 35 years old, and he or she must have been a resident of the United States for 14 years. After the Civil War, Congress proposed, and three-quarters of the states, ratified Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to exclude those who had participated in the rebellion from federal office. It is important to read the text of that provision carefully:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer........

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