In December 2023, the Colorado Supreme Court rejected former president Donald Trump's presidential eligibility on the basis of his actions during the January 6 Capitol attack, adhering to the Fourteenth Amendment disqualification theory.

The Colorado Supreme Court's ruling in Anderson v. Griswold was the first time that a presidential candidate was disqualified from office in a state on the basis of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Militant organizations and groups affiliated with the conspiracy theory QAnon formulated logistical plans to gather at the United States Capitol.

In the lead up to January 6, Trump continued to repeat false claims about election results of various states including Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, and Arizona.

[1] On the morning of January 6, Trump gave a speech in the Ellipse, a park near the White House, and encouraged his followers to walk down to Pennsylvania Avenue to incite within Republicans the "kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country".

In August 2023, conservative legal scholars and Federalist Society members William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, in an article to be published in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, posited that Trump is ineligible to be president.

[3][4] Baude and Paulsen argue that Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment—a section that prevents individuals from holding office who, having "previously taken an oath ... to support the Constitution of the United States", have "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the United States—applies to Trump through his fraudulent electors plot and "specific encouragement" of January 6, including refusing to call in the National Guard, evidenced by the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack and his second federal indictment.

According to Baude and Paulsen, states are given legal obligation and precedent to remove Trump from primary ballots under Article Two of the Constitution, which establishes presidential eligibility requirements.

[8][9][10][11][12] In March 2022, a district judge ruled that then-representative Madison Cawthorn, who had participated in the January 6 attack on the Capitol, could not be barred from the ballot as an insurrectionist due to the Amnesty Act of 1872.

[14][15] In September 2022, Couy Griffin, an Otero County, New Mexico commissioner, was barred from holding public office for life, his participation as the leader of the Cowboys for Trump group during the attack on the Capitol having been found to be an act of insurrection under Section 3.

[16][17] On September 6, 2023, six voters filed a lawsuit in Colorado state district court invoking the Fourteenth Amendment disqualification theory.

[22] The court heard from several eyewitnesses, including two police officers and a member of Congress; the case for Trump being disqualified also made use of some findings from the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.

Chief Justice Boatright dissented based on the contention that the question of whether a candidate had participated in an insurrection was too broad to be adjudicated under the relevant jurisdictional statute.

[40][41] The court's ruling was initially stayed until January 4, 2024, the day before Colorado's deadline to print primary ballots,[42] though it was indefinitely extended.

[43] Within 24 hours of the ruling, numerous threats of violence and death were made on social media towards the members of the Colorado Supreme Court on the majority opinion.

[55] Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) said he intends to introduce legislation withholding election administration federal funds to states implementing the Fourteenth Amendment disqualification theory.

[61] Delaware Senator Chris Coons hailed the Colorado Supreme Court's ruling barring former President Donald Trump from the state's ballot, calling it "a plain reading of the text of the 14th amendment".

[70] The brief from the respondents construes that as a threat, but advised enforcing Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to avoid empowering Trump to cause mayhem similar to that which arose "when he was on the ballot and lost".

[74] Briefs filed in support of Colorado include one from twenty-five American Civil War and Reconstruction historians, including Allan Lichtman, James M. McPherson, Vernon Burton, Manisha Sinha, Paul D. Escott, Brooks D. Simpson and Harry L. Watson, explaining the intent of the authors of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to include the presidency, and arguing that that section does not require any further congressional action for enablement;[75][76] a response of several conservative judges and lawyers led by J. Michael Luttig, arguing that courts have authority to decide the issue, and urging the Supreme Court to use a textualist reading that grants Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment its "fair meaning";[77] and one from the Colorado Secretary of State, Jena Griswold, arguing that the state should be able to rely on its own judicial process to deem if a candidate is qualified to be on the ballot.

[78] In its brief, the Constitutional Accountability Center urged the court to follow Scalia's textualist concurrence in NLRB v. Canning, which pointed towards the president being an officer of the U.S.[79] At oral arguments, Trump was represented by Jonathan F. Mitchell, the voters who filed the original request were represented by Jason Murray, and Secretary Griswold by Shannon Stevenson of the Colorado Attorney General's office.