Colorado decision written to maximize pressure on Trump-appointed judges: analysis

The Colorado Supreme Court disqualified Donald Trump from the state's presidential ballot in a ruling that appears intended to put pressure on the justices he appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The court ruled 4-3 that Trump is ineligible under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to run for office due to his involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection, and the majority quoted Trump-nominated justice Neil Gorsuch in its decision – which could make things awkward when the time comes to hear that case, reported Newsweek.

"Of course the Supreme Court is going to weigh in and likely overturn the Colorado state Supreme Court's interpretation of Colorado state law," said Elie Mystal, an attorney and justice correspondent for The Nation.

"I would like to point out that they [the Colorado Supreme Court's justices] were so aware of what SCOTUS was about to do in terms of bending over backwards, that they literally quote Neil Gorsuch, Neil Gorsuch when he was sitting in the federal circuit in Colorado," Mystal told MSNBC on Tuesday evening. "They quote Gorsuch for the opinion that Colorado gets to decide its own rules about who's qualified or not for ballot in Colorado."

In a case involving a naturalized American citizen who wanted to run for president, Gorsuch found that Colorado could exclude him because he did not meet the Constitution's natural-born citizen requirement.

"A state's legitimate interest in protecting the integrity and practical functioning of the political process permits it to exclude from the ballot candidates who are constitutionally prohibited from assuming office," Gorsuch wrote in the ruling quoted by the state Supreme Court.

That reference was included to maximize the pressure on Gorsuch and the Supreme Court's other two Trump-appointed justices, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, to uphold the Colorado ruling and keep the former president off the ballot, according to Mystal.

"That's a Gorsuch opinion that they quote in the thing, so if Gorsuch had any logical consistency he would likely uphold the Colorado state court's opinion, but what we're about to see if just how again hypocritical and unserious this Supreme Court is when it comes to protecting their partisan sugar daddies like Donald Trump," Mystal said.

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