Following the Supreme Court ruling to restore former President Donald Trump to the primary ballot in Colorado, candidates in the 2024 race are sharing their thoughts on the historic decision.
The decision came just 24 hours ahead of Super Tuesday, when more than a dozen states, including Colorado, will vote in primary elections.
Trump shared his thoughts on the decision Monday from Mar-a-Lago.
"You cannot take somebody out of a race," he said. "The voters can take the person out of the race very quickly. But a court shouldn't be doing that, and the Supreme Court saw that very well, and I really do believe that will be a unifying factor because while most states were thrilled to have me, there were some that didn't, and they didn't want that for political reasons."
Republican presidential candidate and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley also shared her support of the unanimous decision with voters in Texas on Monday.
"We don't ever want some elected official in a state or anybody else saying who can and can't be on a ballot," Haley said. "This is America. Look, I'll defeat Donald Trump fair and square but I want him on that ballot."
In Lexington, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein made several stops on Monday. She also backed the court's ruling, but added more needs to be done to protect other candidates' right to run for office.
"I respect the decision of the court that voters should decide," Stein told LEX 18 News. "I will say at the same time, that states do a lot to keep candidates like myself off the ballot. So, I think that kind of freedom to participate in our democracy should be applied more broadly, not just the billionaire candidates who have been manipulating the public for quite some time."
University of Kentucky law professor, Josh Douglas, added the decision will have implications beyond just Colorado.
"Several other states have tried to say that Trump is ineligible to become President. The Maine Secretary of State did so, there was a case in Illinois. Those cases all go away now," he said.
He added the determination to remove a candidate from a ballot will need to be made by Congress. While it was a unanimous decision to reverse the Colorado ruling, he added there was some disagreement among justices about how to best answer the legal question.
"It was only unanimous in the narrow question, can Colorado kick him off? It was really a 5-4 decision in the way that the court got there," he said.
Four justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson, shared dissenting options, disagreeing with the scope of the majority's ruling.
