Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the Supreme Court questioned the lawyer representing former President Donald Trump about the likelihood that he will run for office again in the future.
Despite being called an insurrectionist by the Colorado Supreme Court, Trump’s legal team, led by attorney Jonathan Mitchell, argued before the Supreme Court on Thursday that the former president should not be excluded on the state’s ballot for elected office.
According to Mitchell, there are precise requirements and restrictions in the Constitution that prohibit someone from standing for office, so Trump cannot be taken off the ballot. He used term limits as an illustration of an acceptable restriction set down in the Constitution.
Interrupting the lawyer, Sotomayor questioned whether Trump’s legal defense for remaining on the ballot depends on meeting the term restriction.
“SOTOMAYOR: You keep saying term limits. There are other presidential qualifications in the Constitution. Age, citizenship. There’s a separate amendment, the 22nd amendment, that doesn’t permit anyone to run for a second term. We have a history of states disqualifying, not all but some, of disqualifying candidates who won’t be of age. What if elected? We have a history of at least one state disqualifying someone who wasn’t a U.S. citizen. Are your arguments limited to section three?
MITCHELL: Not quite. The question, Justice Sotomayor, is whether the state is violating term limits by adding to or altering the extant qualifications for the presidency and the Constitution.
SOTOMAYOR: I’m wondering why the term limits qualification is important to you? Because are you setting up so that if some president runs for a third term, that a state can’t disqualify him from the ballot?
MITCHELL: Of course the state can disqualify him from the ballot because that is a qualification that is categorical. It’s not defeasible by Congress. So a state is enforcing the Constitution when it says you can’t appear on our ballot if you’ve already served two terms as president, the same.
SOTOMAYOR: Same if they’re underage when elected and the same if they’re not a U.S. citizen.
MITCHELL: Same if they’re not both the same person, not a U.S. citizen, for sure. The age is a little more nuanced, because you can imagine a scenario where the person is 34 years old at the time of the election, but he turns 35 before inauguration.
SOTOMAYOR: Well, then that would not that would probably come up to us at some point. The state would make a decision and say he’s ineligible, and we would have to decide that question then. But my point is, adding qualifications to what term limit is your argument based on?
MITCHELL: If a state like Colorado says you can’t appear on our presidential ballot unless you are 35 years old on the day of the election, that would be a violation of term limits, because there could be a 34 year old on the day of the election who turns 35 before Inauguration Day. What Colorado has done here, what their Supreme Court has done, is similar because under section three, President Trump needs to qualify during the time that he would hold office. And the Colorado Supreme Court is saying to President Trump, you have to show that you would qualify under section three now at the time of the election.”
