DENVER (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to determine whether former President Donald Trump can keep running for the White House.

Trump on Wednesday appealed a ruling from the Colorado Supreme Court that he’s ineligible for the presidency because he violated a rarely used constitutional prohibition on those who hold office having “engaged in insurrection.” On Tuesday, he appealed a similar ruling from Maine’s Democratic secretary of state, but it’s the Colorado appeal that’s most significant.

That’s because the nation’s highest court has never before ruled on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868 to prevent Confederates from regaining their former government posts. Whatever the Supreme Court decides applies to Colorado will apply to all other 49 states, including Maine.

Trump remains on the ballot in both states until the appeals are done.

WHAT IS SECTION 3?

The provision is only two sentences and seems relatively straightforward.

Section 3 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. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

Nice and simple, right?

Not so fast, Trump’s attorneys say.

WHAT DOES TRUMP’S LEGAL TEAM CONTEND?

Trump’s lawyers say this part of the Constitution wasn’t meant to apply to the president. Notice how it specifically mentions electors, senators and representatives, but not the presidency, they say.

Also, it says those who take an oath to “support” the United States, but the presidential oath doesn’t use that word — instead, the Constitution requires presidents to say they will “preserve, protect and defend” the document. And, finally, Section 3 talks about any other “officer” of the United States, but Trump’s lawyers argue that language is meant to apply to presidential appointees, not the actual president.

That was enough to convince the initial Denver judge who heard the case, who agreed it wasn’t clear that Section 3 applied to the president. But that judge’s decision was reversed by the Colorado Supreme Court.

The majority of the state’s highest court wrote: “President Trump asks us to hold that Section 3 disqualifies every oathbreaking insurrectionist except the most powerful one and that it bars oath-breakers from virtually every office, both state and federal, except the highest one in the land.”

WHAT ARE THE TRUMP TEAM’S OTHER ARGUMENTS?

His lawyers contend that the question of who is covered by a rarely used, once obscure clause is political and cannot be decided by unelected judges. They contend that Jan. 6 wasn’t an insurrection — it wasn’t widespread, they say, and didn’t involve large amounts of firearms or other markers of sedition. They say Trump didn’t “engage” in anything that day other than in exercising his protected free speech rights.

Their final argument is the one that convinced the dissenting three of Colorado’s seven high court justices — the ad hoc way the court went about finding that Trump violated Section 3, in turn, violated the former president’s due process rights. They contend he was entitled to some structured, adversarial legal process rather than a court in Colorado trying to figure out if the Constitution applied to him.

That gets at the unprecedented nature of the cases. Section 3 has rarely been used after an 1872 congressional amnesty excluded most former Confederates from it. The U.S. Supreme Court has never heard such a case. Arguments about legal precedents go back to a sole 1869 opinion from Chief Justice Salmon Chase, who was hearing an appeal as a circuit judge rather than for the high court.

Trump’s critics have filed dozens of lawsuits seeking to disqualify him, and all failed until Colorado. But they usually failed because the judges dodged the constitutional issues or declared themselves unqualified to rule on them. Presuming it takes the case — and every observer expects it will — the Supreme Court doesn’t have much room left to dodge.

WHAT WILL THE SUPREME COURT DO AND WHEN?

Colorado’s Republican Party has already appealed the Colorado ruling, so the justices have had time to think about what they’ll do.

The high court has dozens of different ways it can rule.

It could uphold the Colorado ruling and say Trump is no longer qualified to be president.

The court could say Trump is qualified to be president. That would end all Section 3 challenges, including in Maine.

It could dodge by overruling Colorado on a technicality about the procedures used to get the case there and set itself up for another case in the fall.

It could say Congress makes the final decision.

When the court might rule is another mystery. In Bush v. Gore, the 2000 case that ended the Florida recount and made George W. Bush president, the court ruled in three days. The court could also go slowly and wait until the end of its term on June 30 to rule.

Obviously, that could open the door to more chaos and leave it uncertain during the primaries whether Republicans are voting for someone qualified to be president. That’s why all the parties have sought an expedited appeal and a ruling as quickly as possible.

AREN’T REPUBLICANS JUST GOING TO RULE FOR TRUMP?

The Colorado high court’s seven justices were all appointed by Democrats. Six of the nine U.S. Supreme Court Justices were appointed by Republicans, three by Trump.

But the Colorado court split 4-3 on the ruling. The majority quoted a ruling from Neil Gorsuch, one of Trump’s conservative Supreme Court appointees, when he was a federal judge in Colorado. He ruled then that the state properly kept a naturalized citizen born in Guyana off the presidential ballot because he didn’t meet the constitutional qualifications.

Democrats have already begun to suggest that Justice Clarence Thomas should recuse himself because his wife, a Republican activist, supported Trump’s effort to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden. Thomas has only recused himself from one other case related to the 2020 election and so far the people trying to disqualify Trump haven’t asked him to do so here.

Some of the strongest advocates of using Section 3 against Trump have been prominent conservative legal theorists and lawyers who argue that courts have to follow the actual words of the Constitution. They argue there’s no wiggle room here — Trump is clearly disqualified.

The question of whether Trump is qualified hasn’t broken on traditional partisan lines in the legal world, partly because this is completely new legal ground, it’s hard to predict how individual justices will rule based on their ideology.

But the reason most legal observers expect Trump to win at the high court is because courts are very hesitant to limit voters’ choices. There’s even a term for that — the “political question,” whether a legal dispute is better settled by the people the voters have selected to make the laws than by unelected judges.

If that doesn’t happen, some critics warn, and Trump’s campaign is ended by Section 3, expect it to become weaponized in political races. Imagine a world where any politician’s career can end in a moment when a court or an election official decides that person “engaged in insurrection,” they caution.

Unless the high court shuts this down, they warn, Trump might only be the start.

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Tim Scott has dropped out of the race for the Republican primary nomination.

The South Carolina senator was well-funded but struggled to gain traction in national or early-state polls. He told Fox News late Sunday that he would not endorse another GOP candidate.

Here’s a look at the candidates still competing for the Republican and Democratic nominations, as well as the third-party contenders:

DONALD TRUMP

The former president announced his third campaign for the White House on Nov. 15, 2022, at his Mar-a-Lago resort, forcing the party to again decide whether to embrace a candidate whose refusal to accept defeat in 2020 sparked the U.S. Capitol attack and still dominates his speeches.

The GOP front-runner remains hugely popular in the Republican Party, despite making history as the first president to be impeached twice and inciting the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. Referring to himself as America’s “most pro-life president,” Trump’s three nominations of conservative judges to the Supreme Court paved the way for the reversal of Roe v. Wade, which had legalized abortion nationwide for nearly 50 years. Sweeping criminal justice reforms he signed into law in 2019 eased mandatory minimum sentences and gave judges more discretion in sentencing.

In March, Trump became the first former U.S. president to be criminally charged, facing 34 felony counts of falsifying business records as part of a hush money scheme. Since then, he has been charged with 57 more felonies in three other criminal cases, accused of mishandling and unlawfully retaining classified documents and trying to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 election.

RON DESANTIS

The Florida governor officially launched his 2024 presidential campaign on May 24 in a glitch-marred Twitter announcement.

Heralding his state as a place “where woke goes to die,” DeSantis has framed his campaign around a desire to bring the conservative policies he championed in Florida to the national stage. He has made a name for himself battling with Disney over the entertainment giant’s opposition to a bill dubbed by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, which bans instruction or classroom discussion of LGBTQ issues in Florida public schools for all grades.

Under his governorship, the state has also banned abortions after six weeks of pregnancy and blocked public colleges from using federal or state funding on diversity programs.

NIKKI HALEY

The former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina governor became the first major GOP challenger to Trump when she kicked off her campaign on Feb. 15 in Charleston. She is the only woman in the GOP field.

The former Trump Cabinet official once said she wouldn’t challenge her former boss for the White House in 2024. But she changed her mind, citing the country’s economic troubles and the need for “generational change,” a nod to the 77-year-old Trump’s age.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY

The wealthy biotech entrepreneur and author of “Woke, Inc.” kicked off his presidential campaign on Feb. 21 with a video and op-ed.

The son of Indian immigrants, he has gained stature in conservative circles for his criticism of the environmental, social and corporate governance movement that aims to promote socially responsible investing. He has largely self-funded his campaign so far.

CHRIS CHRISTIE

The former two-term New Jersey governor went after Trump when announcing his presidential campaign on June 6 in New Hampshire, calling the former president a “lonely, self-consumed, self-serving mirror hog” and arguing that he’s the only one who can stop him.

Christie, a 2016 presidential candidate and former Trump adviser, has said that others may be afraid to challenge the former president, but he has no such qualms. “The reason I’m going after Trump is twofold,” Christie said. “One, he deserves it. And two, it’s the way to win.”

ASA HUTCHINSON

The former two-term Arkansas governor launched his presidential campaign on April 26 in Bentonville, pledging to “bring out the best of America” and to reform federal law enforcement agencies.

He announced his campaign shortly after Trump was indicted by a grand jury in New York and has called for the former president to drop out of the race, saying, “The office is more important than any individual person.”

DOUG BURGUM

The two-term North Dakota governor announced his candidacy on June 7 in Fargo. A former computer software entrepreneur, he is known to few outside his home state but portrays himself as a commonsense, rural-state conservative experienced in energy policy.

DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY FIELD

JOE BIDEN

President Joe Biden formally announced his reelection campaign on April 25 in a video, asking voters for time to “finish this job.”

Biden, the oldest president in America history, would be 86 at the end of a second term, and his age has prompted some of his critics to question whether he can serve effectively. A notable swath of Democratic voters has indicated they would prefer he not run, though he is expected to easily win the Democratic nomination.

Biden, who has vowed to “restore the soul of America,” plans to run on his record. He spent his first two years as president combating the coronavirus pandemic and pushing through major bills such as the bipartisan infrastructure package and legislation to promote high-tech manufacturing and climate measures.

MARIANNE WILLIAMSON

Self-help author Marianne Williamson entered the Democratic primary on March 4 in Washington, calling for “a vision of justice and love that is so powerful that it will override the forces of hatred and injustice and fear.”

During her unsuccessful 2020 presidential campaign, she proposed the creation of a Department of Peace and argued the federal government should pay large financial reparations to Black Americans as atonement for centuries of slavery and discrimination.

DEAN PHILLIPS

The Minnesota congressman is the first elected Democrat to challenge Biden for the nomination. After months of calling for a primary challenger, Phillips entered the race himself on Oct. 27 with a speech outside New Hampshire’s statehouse.

While Phillips has been effusive in his praise for Biden, the 54-year-old also says Democrats need younger voices to avoid a nightmare scenario where Trump wins another election next fall.

Phillips is one of the wealthiest members of Congress and heir to his stepfather’s Phillips Distilling Company empire, which holds major vodka and schnapps brands. He once served as that company’s president but also ran the gelato maker Talenti. His grandmother was the late Pauline Phillips, better known as the advice columnist “Dear Abby.”

INDEPENDENT BIDS

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.

The bestselling author and environmental lawyer announced on Oct. 9 that he was ending his Democratic presidential bid and instead launching an independent run.

A nephew of President John F. Kennedy and son of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, he initially launched a long-shot bid to challenge Biden for the Democratic nomination on April 19 in Boston. He said in announcing his party switch that he intended to be a spoiler candidate for both Biden and Trump.

Kennedy has emerged as one of the leading voices of the anti-vaccine movement, with public health experts and even members of his own family describing his work as misleading and dangerous. He has also been linked to far-right figures in recent years.

JILL STEIN

The environmental activist, whose 2016 third-party presidential bid was blamed by Democrats for helping Trump win the White House, says she is making another run for the nation’s highest office.

Stein announced Nov. 9 that she will again run under the Green Party banner. “I’m running for president to offer that choice for the people outside of the failed two-party system,” she said.

She ran against Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 as a Green Party candidate and received about 1% of the vote. Some Democrats said her candidacy siphoned votes away from Clinton, particularly in swing states like Wisconsin.

CORNEL WEST

The progressive activist and scholar announced Oct. 5 that he was ending his bid for the presidency under the Green Party banner and was instead running as an independent.

West wrote on X that he was running as an independent to “end the iron grip of the ruling class and ensure true democracy!” He added, “We need to break the grip of the duopoly and give power to the people.”

He initially announced in June that he would be running as a member of The People’s Party before soon switching to the Green Party.

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