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zataomm  4mo ago (text post)   5351 thread views

Colorado Supreme Court Thread

Link to the decision

I don't know to what extent there are established precedents for when a topic is worthy of a mega-thread, but this decision seems like a big deal to me with a lot to discuss, so I'm putting this thread here as a place for discussion. If nobody agrees then I guess they just won't comment.

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Reuters reports:

Maine on Thursday disqualified Donald Trump from the state ballot in next year’s U.S. presidential primary election, becoming the second state to bar the former president for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, concluded that Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, incited an insurrection when he spread false claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election and then urged his supporters to march on the Capitol to stop lawmakers from certifying the vote. "The U.S. Constitution does not tolerate an assault on the foundations of our government," Bellows wrote in a 34-page ruling.

The decision can be appealed to a state Superior Court, and Bellows suspended her ruling until the court rules on the matter.

Brave decision from Bellows. Her decision is of course subject to judicial review whichever way it went, but as an elected official she faces potential blowback. Maine is blue, but not very blue. Never mind. Turns out the Maine SoS is chosen by the legislature.

Her fellow Maine Democrat Jared Golden has come out against her decision, saying that Trump should not be disqualified without a criminal conviction. However I think that Golden is clearly wrong here. As Ilya Somin points out, none of the confederates disqualified under section 3 had been convicted of crimes relating to their actions in the civil war.

Copy of the decision and press release here.

To be fair, the relevant law requires the Secretary of State to do this adjudication within a specific (tight) timeline after receiving challenges in certain formats, which were filed by other people. Trump argued that Bellows should have recused herself given the long-standing objections she's publicized, but he's Trump (or Trump lawyers), so that doesn't mean it was possible.

To be... less charitable, the opinion does not read like a surfeit of either procedural ("As discussed on the record, due to a technical difficult suffered by the Rosen Challengers, a Dropbox link provided to the parties before the hearing and containing many of the Rosen Exhibits was inoperative.... This delay does not amount to a Due Process violation. There is no requirement under the APA that evidence be shared prior to an administrative hearing.") or legal caution.

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