Donald Trump will appear on the presidential primary ballot in Massachusetts regardless of the fate of a Colorado Supreme Court decision ordering the former president’s name stripped from that state’s primary ballot, Massachusetts’ top election official said Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the election chief in Maine expects to rule next week on a legal challenge to Trump appearing on that state’s primary ballot in March, as the fallout from the Colorado ruling reverberated across the country just weeks before voters begin casting ballots in GOP primaries.
In a momentous decision issued Tuesday, the Colorado court ruled 4-3 that Trump was ineligible for the White House under a rarely used clause in the US Constitution. The clause, which falls under the 14th Amendment, bars from office anyone who swore an oath to “support” the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.” It was the first state to rule against Trump in a number of legal challenges claiming he is barred from the ballot because of his involvement in inciting the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump has said he intends to appeal to the Supreme Court, which could ultimately decide his fate not just in Colorado but across the country. The potential Supreme Court review could mean judges and officials in other states weighing similar challenges hold off on ruling in their cases, constitutional law experts said.
In Maine, for example, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows was expected to rule by Friday after hearing arguments from the challengers and Trump’s attorneys last week.
A spokesperson for Bellows said Wednesday that she now expects to issue a decision early next week. She also gave both sides the option of filing supplemental arguments addressing “the impact, if any, of [the Colorado] decision on this case.”
In Massachusetts, it appears any similar challenges would find little success. Secretary of State William F. Galvin, an eight-term Democrat, said Wednesday that he will be putting Trump’s name on the presidential primary ballot regardless of the Colorado ruling, because the state Republican Party submitted his name for the ballot.
Plus, Trump hasn’t yet been convicted of any charges related to Jan. 6, Galvin said.
“There a lot of good reasons not to like Trump. But this isn’t about Trump’s personality or whether he’s guilty or not,” Galvin said. “This is about what the law says.”
That means that even if Trump is found guilty of inciting an insurrection and therefore ineligible to serve as president, he can still be on the ballot in Massachusetts, Galvin said. State law would also not block other candidates who would be ineligible to serve, such as former presidents Barack Obama or Bill Clinton, who have served the two-term limit, or Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former California governor and actor who wasn’t born in the United States.
If a party nominated them, their names would appear. “It just means they can’t ever be sworn in,” Galvin said.
The situation underscores the inconsistent patchwork of ballot access among the 50 states. In Massachusetts, being eligible for the ballot isn’t the same as being eligible to hold office. That is not the case in Colorado, which requires candidates to sign an affidavit saying they are qualified to assume federal office if elected. Massachusetts has no such affidavit, Galvin said.
In New Hampshire, Tim Noronha, an engineer at a manufacturing company where GOP rival Chris Christie appeared Wednesday, characterized the Colorado ruling as “disruptive,” and predicted it will “increase sympathy voting for Trump. Whether or not there’s justification for the decision, emotional reactions will create support for Trump.” Noronha said he is considering voting for either Christie or former UN ambassador Nikki Haley.
Both Christie and Haley, however, were among a number of Republican candidates and figures who condemned the Colorado ruling on Wednesday. Trump has blamed President Biden for the lawsuits against him, saying his rival is “defacing the Constitution” in an effort to end his campaign.
While dozens of lawsuits have been filed nationally to disqualify Trump from the ballot, the Colorado case is the first in which the plaintiffs succeeded. After a weeklong hearing in November, a lower court judge found — and the state Supreme Court agreed — that Trump had “engaged in insurrection” by inciting the Jan. 6 attack.
In another 14th Amendment case, a Michigan judge ruled that Congress, not the judiciary, should decide whether Trump can stay on the ballot. That ruling is being appealed. The liberal group Free Speech For People also filed another lawsuit in Oregon seeking to remove Trump from the ballot there.
Should the Supreme Court accept the case, it would be the “most important electoral case the court has heard since Bush v. Gore,” said Kent Greenfield, Boston College law professor.
“It’s sort of like a ball of yarn that looks pretty complicated, but if you start unraveling it, each piece is straightforward,” said Greenfield, who signed onto an amicus brief in the Colorado case challenging some of Trump’s arguments. He argued that should the Supreme Court uphold Colorado’s ruling, he could see the “court saving not only the country, but saving itself and the Republican Party in one opinion.”
“They’re seen as a political institution,” he said. “This is the kind of case that repairs that reputation pretty quickly.”
But others doubted the Supreme Court would willingly dive into the case’s most hotly debated questions.
Lawrence Friedman, a New England Law professor, said the dissenting opinions in the Colorado case hinged, in part, on the argument that Trump was not afforded procedural due process. One opinion argued that the lower court there was interpreting the Constitution through “makeshift proceedings” that lacked basic discovery or the ability to compel witnesses.
That, Friedman said, could make the Colorado ruling “vulnerable” and give the Supreme Court the option of issuing a narrowly tailored ruling that doesn’t actually address the case’s substantive questions, including whether the disqualification clause applies to the president or whether Trump should be disqualified from holding office again.
“The chief justice has an interest . . . to protect the institution of the court: Move slowly, don’t create too many waves,” Friedman said. “They’re likely going to be looking for a way to issue a narrow opinion that does not disallow the leading [GOP] candidate from being on the ballot.”
And unless the Supreme Court upholds the Colorado ruling in full, he said, the legal wrangling is almost guaranteed to continue.
“This is not the end of anything,” Friedman said. “This is yet another chapter in an unfolding story.”
The decision may have a wider ripple effect, too.
Paul Collins, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said he could see a scenario where groups make cases to remove other candidates from the ballot who may have been implicated in the Jan. 6 attack, such as those running House and Senate races.
Members of Congress “no question” fall under the 14th Amendment, he said.
“You could see this effort go a little wider,” he said. “It is interesting to see how the law can be weaponized.”
Emma Platoff and Travis Anderson of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Samantha J. Gross can be reached at samantha.gross@globe.com. Follow her @samanthajgross. Matt Stout can be reached at matt.stout@globe.com. Follow him @mattpstout.