BREAKING: Supreme Court rules Trump cannot be removed from any state ballot

breaking news from the Supreme Court about former president Donald Trump the high court just said moments ago that Mr Trump can stay on this year's presidential ballot in Colorado after that state barred him from its Republican primary Colorado Supreme Court had disqualified Mr Trump under a a constitutional provision that bars people who engage an Insurrection from holding office the decision today of course coming ahead of tomorrow's super Tuesday contest when 15 States including Colorado will

hold primary elections senior legal correspondent Laura Jared is here with us to walk us through what this decision means and what this decision uh does not mean V hilard is also here in the studio as well he's been covering uh the Trump campaign van I'll get to you in just a moment Laura let me start with you uh this was a case that was about Colorado but it sounds like this is going to have ramifications that extend beyond just that state absolutely Craig the Republican front round is now per

mitted to run for president not only in Colorado but across all 50 states the justices here in a unanimous decision rejecting Colorado's effort to ban him under the Constitution's so-called Insurrection Clause the heart of this case about the meaning of a largely untested provision of the Constitution section three of the 14th Amendment which says essentially that if you take an Oaths uph hold the Constitution and then you engage in Insurrection you are not permitted to hold that office once aga

in but again the court here is saying because the Constitution makes Congress rather than the states responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal office holders and candidates we reverse so again a clear wind for the Republican front runner the Colorado case was the one that was in front of them right now but other states had tried to ban him from the ballot including Maine and Illinois with the court doing this right now those essentially will also be wiped away Craig and again as you po

int out a unanimous decision not something we see uh very frequently from from the Supreme Court these days there were two questions at hand you mentioned of course uh the clause in the 14th Amendment but there was also the question of who actually gets to decide who's engaged in an Insurrection this in this country yes and the uh Donald Trump's attorneys had essentially tried to convince the court successfully here that this was for Congress to to decide not just any one state could sort of uni

laterally take somebody off a ballot in a national election that was something that the justices were very interested in argument something that they appear deeply skeptical of the Colorado voters in this case trying to do that and obviously um Trump's position prevailed in this case so this does now mean that the outstanding ballot challenges have been done away with yes remember there were dozens and dozens of lawsuits across the country some courts had tried to dodge the issue some courts had

ruled in Fr Trump's favor saying States didn't have the power to do this Colorado was the first one that had taken that unprecedented step in trying to ban him and then two others followed as I mentioned in both Illinois and Maine and now those will no longer hold well we've talked about this a fair amount over the past few weeks you're not terribly surprised it seemed as if the justices were openly skeptical shall we say when those oral arguments were made roughly a month ago they were and you

'll remember how this all started was by voters this was sort of a a a project that was started at its Inception with a liberal than Tink group that was trying to see if they could disqualify the former president they started sort of a state-by-state effort trying to figure out which states would be most receptive to it but it wasn't just progressives who were thinking that they might actually be able to do this successfully Craig there were a number of outspoken um Republicans and other conserv

atives who had tried to make this argue and say if you look at just the plain text of the 14th Amendment he should be banned but again we're going to work our way through the decision and see exactly how the court dispense with that thanks for watching stay updated about breaking news and top stories on the NBC News app or follow us on social media