More states gear up to hear challenges to Trump’s eligibility

“Now whether the 14th Amendment applies, I’ll let the [US Supreme] court make that decision. But he certainly supported an insurrection. No question about it. None. Zero. And he seems to be doubling down on about everything,” Mr Biden said.

Debate is raging in courtrooms across the country about whether the 14th Amendment bars Mr Trump from running for president again because he may have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” during the January 6 attack, when a group of his supporters stormed the US Capitol in a bid to stop the certification of Mr Biden’s victory in presidential polls.

More than a dozen other states have pending legal challenges to Mr Trump’s eligibility for office under the same amendment, according to US media reports.

Maine’s Secretary of State is expected to rule on Friday on whether the former president will be allowed on her state’s primary ballot.

Last month, the Minnesota Supreme Court rejected an attempt to block him from the state’s Republican primary ballot next year, but said it wouldn’t stop his legal challengers from “bringing a petition raising their claims as to the general election”.

Michael McConnell, a former circuit judge on the US Court of Appeals, said courts would need to assess the cases carefully given any political fallout from the American public.

“I think a court looking at this is going to have to look at it very seriously and soberly. And they’re not just going to be looking at text and history, but they are going to be making arguments that will resonate and make sense with the American public because if they don’t, there will be hell to pay,” Mr McConnell said.

Chicago University law professor William Baude said states will now be checking the 14th Amendment closely at the primary and the general election stages.

“States don’t have to do that. Technically, a state could choose to put somebody unqualified on the primary ballot or even put somebody unqualified on the general ballot,” Professor Baude said.

“They run a risk of doing so, of course, that the people’s votes from that state will be thrown out or wasted if the candidate turns out not to be qualified.”

But Harvard University law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz said the authors of the amendment “never intended for it to be used to deny voters the right to decide who their next president would be”.

“It’s clear that this measure was never intended to turn the enforcement mechanisms over to individual states and their courts,” Professor Dershowitz said.

The Colorado Republican Party is likely to circumvent the court’s ruling by switching its presidential nominating process from a primary to a caucus system, which would still allow voters to cast their ballots for him.

The matter must be settled by January 5, the deadline for the state to print its presidential primary ballots.