The Heartburn for Democrats In The SCOTUS Reversal of the Colorado Supreme Court Comes From Part Of The Opinion That Goes Beyond Colorado

"Don't Bring Your Election Challenge To Us" Is the Message SCOTUS Sent to The Democrats.

The subject of this article is not something that I divined myself without being influenced by the comments of others that I’ve read and heard over the past two weeks. But the “X” post above was my initial comment the morning the Supreme Court issued its opinion restoring former President Trump to the ballot in Colorado. Close scrutiny of what the Court did shows why the Democrats — and three Justices who joined in a concurring opinion written by Justice Sotomayor — were so agitated. Instead of stopping at a ruling that a state lacked the authority to implement the disqualification clause of the 14th Amendment with respect to an election to a federal office, the Court went on to answer the next question — how is the disqualification clause to be implemented in the future consistent with the language of the Amendment?

Before getting into the text of the opinion and why my initial observation was correct, it should be noted that the decision of the case was 9-0. That means that every Justice agreed that Colorado should lose on the issue of whether a state can implement the disqualification clause with regard to a federal office. The vote total in a judicial outcome reflects the outcome of the case — not the reasoning underlying the outcome. That is shown in the opinion(s). The Justices are free to write opinions or join the opinions of others to explain their votes.

When fewer than five justices join any particular opinion, the outcome of the case is called a “plurality” and the opinion that garners the most support — or the portion of any particular opinion that garners the most support — is the “Opinion of the Court.” But the vitality of that opinion — and it’s persuasiveness in the future — is undermined by the fact that a majority of the Court did not agree.

In the Colorado case the vote on the outcome was 9-0.

But more important is the fact that the Opinion issued by the Court had the full support of five Justices in its entirety. That makes it an “Opinion of the Court” for all purposes that will stand until five Justices decided in some future case to overturn it.