The Supreme Court ruled Monday that states cannot strip former President Donald Trump from their ballots over claims he engaged in an insurrection and likely shut down future federal court challenges as well, effectively settling the debate over whether he can be an option for voters this year.

The court ruled unanimously that Colorado’s high court erred when it deleted Mr. Trump from that state’s GOP primary ballot.

And a majority of the court went further, ruling that only Congress can enforce the Constitution’s insurrection language through laws. And given there is no current such law, that seems to shut down future federal court challenges as well.

“We conclude that States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office. But States have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency,” the court said in its unsigned opinion.

The justices said that allowing states to make their own decisions about who can appear on a presidential ballot would result in “chaos,” with no end to the mischief that some states might engage in.

“The disruption would be all the more acute — and could nullify the votes of millions and change the election result — if Section 3 enforcement were attempted after the Nation has voted. Nothing in the Constitution requires that we endure such chaos — arriving at any time or different times, up to and perhaps beyond the Inauguration,” the justices said.

“Big win for America!!!” Mr. Trump said on social media.

The three Democratic appointees on the court, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, agreed that Colorado erred. But they said their colleagues went too far in ruling only Congress can act.

“In doing so, the majority shuts the door on other potential means of federal enforcement. We cannot join an opinion that decides momentous and difficult issues unnecessarily, and we therefore concur only in the judgment,” they wrote.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, also said her colleagues could have been more circumspect.

“Particularly in this circumstance, writings on the Court should turn the national temperature down, not up,” wrote Justice Barrett. “For present purposes, our differences are far less important than our unanimity: All nine Justices agree on the outcome of this case. That is the message Americans should take home,” she wrote.

The case sped through the courts, moving from a state trial court to Colorado’s high court to the U.S. Supreme Court in a matter of months.

The justices issued an order saying that while they were considering the case, Colorado had to keep Mr. Trump’s name on the ballot for Tuesday’s GOP primary. Early voting began last month so voters have already been casting ballots for Mr. Trump, even with the matter officially in doubt.

Mr. Trump’s access to the ballot is one of a wave of legal battles the former president is fighting.

The justices are also set to review an appeals court decision that rejected his attempts to claim immunity from prosecution based on his actions while president. Those claims stem from an indictment by Special Counsel Jack Smith accusing him over meddling in the 2020 election.

Mr. Smith has brought another indictment charging the president with mishandling secret documents and obstructing the investigation after classified materials were found at his home in Florida.

The former president also faces criminal charges in state courts in Georgia and New York.

On the ballot question, most courts had sided with Mr. Trump, with many of them ruling his challengers didn’t have standing.

Other courts had said he couldn’t be ousted from the primary, which is internal party business, but said a challenge might be possible if he were to appear on the general election ballot.

An Illinois judge did try to boot Mr. Trump from the ballot while the justices were reviewing the Colorado dispute. Before the oral arguments, Maine’s secretary of state also tried to remove his name, but that decision was put on hold while the appeal was pending.

Even in Colorado, the trial court that first heard the case had ruled Mr. Trump could appear. But the state Supreme Court overturned that decision in a 4-3 ruling that the justices said broke new legal ground.

They concluded Mr. Trump did engage in an insurrection with his behavior surrounding the 2020 election, that he was covered by the relevant part of the Constitution, that his words were not protected by the First Amendment, and that Colorado could act on its own to block him from the ballot.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment reads: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

The U.S. Supreme Court justices during oral argument had suggested numerous reasons to reject Colorado’s ruling.

One justice said the language seemed to intentionally exclude the presidency from the list of covered offices, while another justice pointed out an early court decision just after the amendment was ratified suggested states couldn’t act without legislation from Congress enabling them to do so.

Congress had just such a law on the books from 1870 to 1948, when it was stricken from the books in a broad rewrite.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. warned of a ballot arms race, with GOP and Democratic secretaries of state each rushing to oust candidates of the other party.

“It’ll come down to just a handful of states that are going to decide the presidential election. That’s a pretty daunting consequence,” he said.

Indeed, some Republicans had already suggested that the border chaos or President Biden’s dealings with Iran could constitute aid and comfort to an enemy, worthy of being ousted from a ballot.

In Monday’s ruling the court boiled all those objections down to a more simple principle: only Congress can make these judgments.

“The Constitution empowers Congress to prescribe how those determinations should be made,” the court said.

Left-wing activists had called for Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from the case over his wife’s support for Mr. Trump’s objections to the 2020 election results.

Justice Thomas rejected those demands and did take part in the ruling.

The case is Trump v. Anderson. Norma Anderson is one of the Colorado voters seeking to block him from the ballot.

• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.

• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.