WASHINGTON Supreme Court justices seemed skeptical Thursday that a state should be allowed to decide on its own that Donald Trump s coup attempt means he is disqualified from running for the presidency again, as Colorados top court has ruled.

During two hours of oral arguments about whether the 14th Amendments ban on insurrectionists from holding office applies to Trump because of his words and actions leading up to and on Jan. 6, 2021, both conservative and liberal justices wondered how to deal with different states coming to different conclusions should they affirm Colorados decision to ban Trump from the presidential primary ballot there.

If Colorados position were upheld, surely there will be disqualifying proceedings on the other side, and some of those will succeed, Chief Justice John Roberts said during questioning of Jason Murray, the lawyer representing Colorado residents who sought Trumps disqualification.

It just doesnt seem like a state call, said Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

And Justice Elena Kagan pointed out that a previous Supreme Court ruling limited states ability to disqualify minor-party candidates because of the pervasive national interest.

One states decision to take a candidate off the ballot affects everybody elses rights, she said, wondering why the same logic should not extend to the Colorado ruling.

Murray, who once clerked for Kagan and then worked for Justice Neil Gorsuch when he was a federal appeals court judge in Denver, answered that the court had the ability to identify frivolous removals from a ballot. Further, he said that disqualifying a candidate for having violated the ban on insurrectionists was no different from banning one for being underage or a foreign citizen.

The indisputable facts of what Trump said on video and in his Twitter feed is really the essence of our case here, Murray said. If this court writes an opinion affirming based on the indisputable facts of what President Trump said on Jan. 6 and in the weeks leading up to it, and his virtual confession on Twitter after the fact, then it would be reversible error for any other state to conclude otherwise.

Trumps lawyer, former Texas Solicitor General Jonathan Mitchell, argued that states do not have the right to keep federal candidates who committed insurrection off a ballot unless Congress specifically gives them that ability. It is entirely up to Congress, he said.

Mitchell also argued that the language of the prohibition keeps an insurrectionist from holding office, but not from running for that office. And he argued that the president is not covered by the ban to begin with.

The law is clearly on our side, he said.

When at one point questioned by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on whether he agreed that Jan. 6 was, in fact, an insurrection, Mitchell said that he did not.

This was a riot. It was not an insurrection, he said.

The government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, on behalf of a handful of Colorado residents, sued to keep Trumps name off the ballot because of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars those who previously swore an oath to uphold the Constitution but who then engage in insurrection from holding any federal or state office.

Following a weeklong trial, a Colorado judge ruled that Trump had, in fact, engaged in an insurrection.

The Colorado Supreme Court agreed with that finding but ruled that the trial judge had erred by deciding that the presidency is not among the offices covered by the 14th Amendment. The Colorado high courts ruling meant that Trump was not eligible to appear on the Colorado Republican primary ballot.

Both Trump and the Colorado Republican Party appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear it on an expedited basis, although it is unclear how quickly it might issue a ruling.

The high court is likely to receive another high-profile case in the coming days, with Trump expected to appeal a decision by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that he is not immune from prosecution for his coup attempt.