Hidden Change in Supreme Court Trump Ruling Raises Eyebrows

A hidden change in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Monday over Donald Trump's eligibility to appear on state ballots in the 2024 presidential primaries has raised eyebrows.

The nation's high court on Monday reached a 9-0 decision allowing Trump's name to be listed on the primary ballot in states that have challenged his candidacy. In its opinion, the court sided with the former president and GOP front-runner in the 14th Amendment challenge from Colorado, overturning that state Supreme Court's decision that he was ineligible due to his activities surrounding the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The former president had been previously removed from ballots in Maine and Colorado, which both cited the amendment in their decisions, but the issue had been stayed pending the Supreme Court opinion. Trump has denied all wrongdoing in the January 6 case.

Since the high court's ruling, some have noted a hidden change in the issued opinion.

According to the court's opinion documents, when the word "dissent" is searched in the document, a specific section with the term "concurring" is highlighted: "SOTOMAYOR, KAGAN, and JACKSON, JJ., concurring in judgment." This signaled that the portion was previously styled as a partial dissent written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, then changed to a concurrent judgment written by all three justices, Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Newsweek has reached out to the Supreme Court via email for comment on Monday.

Mark Joseph Stern, senior writer at Slate, noted the change on X, formerly Twitter, writing,"If you double click where it says "JJ." at the top, then copy and paste it, that line reads: SOTOMAYOR , J., concurring in part and dissenting in part. And if you do a control-F search for "SOTOMAYOR , J., concurring in part and dissenting in part," it highlights that same line."

"It looks like the liberals' opinion was originally styled as a partial dissent written by Justice Sotomayor, but got changed to a concurrence in the judgment authored jointly by all three liberals," Stern added.

In addition, a computer engineer also noted the change, writing on X with a photo of the metadata, "yeah they left the entire header of it in the PDF source lol."

The curious tweak comes as the three liberal justices, Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson, agreed that no individual state should decide the eligibility of a national candidate, but rejected the idea that the clause should only apply if Congress were to enact a particular legislation pursuant to another section of the 14th Amendment.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, stayed out of the dispute, writing, "In my judgment, this is not the time to amplify disagreement with stridency."

In the unsigned majority opinion, the court said that Section 5 of the 14th Amendment, which gives Congress the "power to enforce" the insurrection clause "by appropriate legislation" is "critical" when it comes to the disqualification clause.

"Neither we nor the respondents are aware of any other legislation by Congress to enforce Section 3," the majority opinion read.

However, in a concurring opinion, Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson said that although they agree that Colorado itself could not enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, "we protest the majority's effort to use this case to define the limits of federal enforcement of that provision."

Quoting Chief Justice John Roberts in the bombshell Dobbs ruling, the trio said, "If it is not necessary to decide more to dispose of a case, then it is necessary not to decide more."

The decision comes one day before the biggest primary day of the 2024 election cycle, known as Super Tuesday, when voters in 16 states, including Colorado, will make their choices known. Maine, which was among the three states awaiting the Supreme Court's decision on the validity of Trump's candidacy, is also holding its primary on Tuesday. Illinois, the third state affected by Monday's decision, is not holding its primary until March 19.