Donald Trump has asked the US Supreme Court to overturn a ruling barring him from running for president in the state of Colorado.
Colorado’s highest court said last month Mr Trump was not an eligible candidate to run in the state as it said he had engaged in insurrection over the US Capitol riot.
His appeal comes a day after he challenged a similar decision by the state of Maine.
Both the rulings are on hold until the appeals play out.
Trump’s critics have filed dozens of lawsuits seeking to disqualify him in multiple states. He lost Colorado by 13 percentage points in 2020 and does not need to win the state to gain either the Republican presidential nomination or the presidency. But the Colorado ruling has the potential to prompt courts or secretaries of state to remove him from the ballot in other, must-win states.
Courts in Minnesota and Michigan have already dismissed similar efforts to disqualify the former US president.A US Supreme Court ruling on the issue of Mr Trump’s eligibility would be binding nationwide.
“The Colorado Supreme Court decision would unconstitutionally disenfranchise millions of voters in Colorado and likely be used as a template to disenfranchise tens of millions of voters nationwide,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in their appeal to the nation’s highest court, noting that Maine has already followed Colorado’s lead.
The Colorado Supreme Court ruling Trump is appealing marked the first time in history that Section three of the 14th Amendment was used to bar a presidential contender from the ballot.
The court found that Trump’s role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol disqualified him under the clause.
The provision has been used so sparingly in American history that the US Supreme Court has never ruled on it.
The Colorado Supreme Court decision was narrow, with four judges in favour and three against. All seven justices were appointed by Democratic governors.
David Janovksy, a senior policy analyst at the Project on Government Oversight, an independent watchdog, told the BBC that that the Supreme Court taking up the issue is the "best outcome" to solve the issue nationally.
"The fact that we now have two states in Colorado and Maine that have made this determination against the backdrop of other states that have declined to go that far means that if there was ever a case for the Supreme Court to resolve, this would be it," he said. "Time is of the essence."
