Just a couple of minutes after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the presidential frontrunner was ineligible to appear on the ballot, a giddy MSNBC anchor immediately started paging through the court’s opinion on-air. And after a little while, she stumbled on what I think is the single most important part of the decision. This is the portion of the ruling that isn’t about the technical definition of an “insurrection,” or about parsing whether a president is considered an “officer” of the United States within the meaning of the 14th Amendment. To be clear, as many legal experts have said, those are important aspects of the opinion, and I’ll get to them in a second.
For now, I’m referring instead to the section of the court’s opinion that addresses whether, under the First Amendment, Donald Trump can be considered a violent “insurrectionist” merely because of his political speech. This part of the ruling begins on page 116, and it’s particularly important because it applies to everyone. It doesn’t just affect presidential frontrunners and candidates for office. It has the potential to affect every American who engages in political speech of any kind, long after Donald Trump is gone.
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