Following a unanimous ruling by the Supreme Court to allow Donald Trump to remain on the ballot in all 50 states despite the text of the 14th Amendment's ruling that insurrectionists cannot hold public office, MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin noted a separate concurrence by the court's three liberal justices that appears to be a warning to their six conservative colleagues.
Reading from the opinion, Rubin noted Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson urged the rest of the court to rein itself in.
'In the concurrence from justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson, a warning of sorts in my view to some of the other justices saying, we didn't need to decide anything more here than the principle that states don't have the authority to disqualify candidates for federal offices," she explained.
The court ruled that the states can only bar people from state offices under the 14th Amendment. For federal offices, the decision has to be made by Congress. SCOTUS did not make any ruling on if Trump was an insurrectionist, which Colorado's Supreme Court had found he was based on actions taken on Jan. 6, 2021.
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Rubin then added, "By going further than that and saying that only Congress has that enforcement power, 'You have decided something that didn't need to be done,' and they say, 'We protest the majority's efforts to use this case to define the limits of federal endorsement of that provision because we would only decide the issue before us. We concur only in the judgment.'"
Elaborating she told the MSNBC panel, They're saying, this is a warning, right? This is a shot across the bow. Don't decide anything you don't have to. Let's not do that. That's what I read in that."
Watch below or at the link.
MSNBC 03 04 2024 10 19 00youtu.be
