The Supreme Court has held 9-0 that the Colorado Supreme Court erred in blessing the disqualification of Donald Trump from the state’s primary election ballot under section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court’s opinion is per curiam. Justice Barrett concurs in part and concurs in the judgment. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Brown Jackson concur in the judgment (i.e., the result). The Court’s opinions are posted online here.

The Court’s per curiam opinion commanded a majority and its reasoning represents the law. It rests substantially on the exclusive power of Congress to enforce section 3 against candidates for federal office, “especially the presidency.”

Does the opinion leave open the possibility that Congress might refuse to certify Trump as president if he were to be elected president on the ground that he is guilty of insurrection? If Congress has not prescribed any means other than conviction of the crime of insurrection to make the determination underlying application of section 3, I doubt it. See opinion at 10. However, I may be mistaken. Perhaps the opinion cannot be read that broadly.

The opinion concludes (emphasis in original):

All nine Members of the Court agree with that result. Our colleagues writing separately further agree with many of the reasons this opinion provides for reaching it. So far as we can tell, they object only to our taking into account the distinctive way Section 3 works and the fact that Section 5 vests in Congress the power to enforce it. These are not the only reasons the States lack power to enforce this particular constitutional provision with respect to federal offices. But they are important ones, and it is the combination of all the reasons set forth in this opinion—not, as some of our colleagues would have it, just one particular rationale—that resolves this case. In our view, each of these reasons is necessary to provide a complete explanation for the judgment the Court unanimously reaches.

Read the whole thing here.