Legal editor Chris Geidner breaks down the Trump 14th Amendment case in detail in his blog LawDork, including a look at Thursday’s arguments before SCOTUS. Geidner starts his step-by-step primer on the case by noting the question presented: "Did the Colorado Supreme Court err in ordering President Trump excluded from the 2024 presidential primary ballot?" Then Geidner outlines who will argue -- and who will not:
Arguing for Donald Trump: Jonathan Mitchell — the former solicitor general of Texas who was the man behind Texas’s S.B. 8 vigilante enforcement abortion ban and many far-right cases since. As Trump is the petitioner, the party who lost below, Mitchell will start the arguments and will save 5 minutes of his assigned 40 minutes for rebuttal to conclude the arguments. Arguing for the other side: Jason Murray, a partner at Olson Grimsley in Colorado, is arguing for the Republican and independent voters who brought the challenge to Trump’s inclusion on the Republican primary ballot.
“A notable “who not” is U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, Geidner notes. “The United States, through the Justice Department, has stayed out of the case completely, filing no brief and thus seeking no argument time. … It is .. a little strange for these arguments over the Fourteenth Amendment to be taking place with the Justice Department — founded, as Attorney General Merrick Garland has said, “to secure the civil rights promised by the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments” — absent from the arguments altogether.”