A lawsuit seeking to bar President Trump from the 2024 ballot in Colorado will move to trial on October 30 after a judge declined to accept the former president’s pretrial challenges. This comes as liberal groups across the country seek to keep the 45th president off next year’s ballot in key states, including Michigan and Minnesota. 

The lawsuit seeking to bar Mr. Trump from the Colorado ballot was brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW. The group argues that Section Three of the 14th Amendment makes Mr. Trump ineligible for the presidency, as it bars those who “engaged” in “insurrection or rebellion” from holding office. 

Section Three, which was intended to be used as a method of keeping former Confederates from holding office, is now being deployed on the grounds that Mr. Trump’s involvement in the January 6 attack on the Capitol represents the same threat. 

On Friday, a state judge in Colorado, Sarah Wallace rejected a challenge to the lawsuit brought by the former president and the Colorado Republican Party, who have argued that these constitutional claims cannot be litigated in Judge Wallace’s courtroom and that Mr. Trump’s free speech rights would be violated by a decision against him in the case. 

The key question of the lawsuit is whether or not Colorado’s secretary of state — the state’s chief election administrator — can keep Mr. Trump off the ballot next year. Judge Wallace wrote that “this is a pivotal issue and one best reserved for trial.” 

The Colorado Republican Party, which joined Mr. Trump in his challenge to the lawsuit, made the “absurd” argument — to use Judge Wallace’s words — that only the state party, and not the secretary of state, can decide which nominee is placed on the general election ballot.

“If the Party, without any oversight, can choose its preferred candidate, then it could theoretically nominate anyone regardless of their age, citizenship, residency,” Judge Wallace wrote. “Such an interpretation is absurd; the Constitution and its requirements for eligibility are not suggestions, left to the political parties to determine at their sole discretion.”

The lawsuit further argues that the secretary of state, Jena Giswold, must bar the former president from appearing on the ballot. Otherwise, she “would have violated her duties under the U.S. Constitution and Colorado law,” as his candidacy will affect “the integrity and fairness of the election.”

In a statement, Ms. Griswold said she looks forward “to the Colorado Court’s substantive resolution of the issues and am hopeful that this case will provide guidance to election officials on Trump’s eligibility as a candidate for office.”

In a statement to CNN, the Trump campaign said Judge Wallace was “wrong” to dismiss the former president’s challenge. 

“She is going against the clear weight of legal authority. We are confident the rule of law will prevail, and this decision will be reversed — whether at the Colorado Supreme Court, or at the U.S. Supreme Court,” a Trump campaign spokesman told the outlet. “To keep the leading candidate for President of the United States off the ballot is simply wrong and un-American.”

The Colorado front is just the latest challenge brought against Mr. Trump’s candidacy by advocates of deploying Section Three of the 14th Amendment. Lawsuits in Michigan and Minnesota have been brought urging state officials to keep the former president off of the ballot in those states. Michigan’s secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, brushed off the possibility of doing such a thing, however, saying that “we’re not the eligibility police.”

Arizona’s secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, also a Democrat, mulled the possibility of barring Mr. Trump from the 2024 ballot at the urging of a small band of conservative legal scholars, but later announced he could do no such thing. “I’m sorry I’m going to have to disappoint them because that’s state statute,” Mr. Fontes said in an interview with FOX10.   

One case was dismissed by a judge in Florida because it had been brought by a single individual. That judge, Robin Rosenberg, found that “an individual citizen does not have standing to challenge whether another individual is qualified to hold public office.”