Former President Donald Trump and his legal team have just filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in a key 2024 election case, the New York Times reports.

This is the case in which an appeal is being made of the Colorado Supreme Court decision that removed Trump from the state's 2024 ballots.

Background

The Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Trump is barred from running for the presidency under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment.

In essence, this provision of the U.S. Constitution bars individuals who take certain government oaths and who have "engaged in insurrection" from holding certain government offices.

The argument is that Trump took such an oath when he became president and that he "engaged in insurrection" with regard to the Capitol protest of Jan. 6, 2021.

Legal experts have seriously questioned the validity of this argument, and many courts have outright rejected it.

Colorado, however, has accepted it, and now the matter is heading to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Trump's brief

Trump and his legal team submitted their brief to the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday.

In the 59-page document, Trump's legal team wrote:

The Court should put a swift and decisive end to these ballot-disqualification efforts, which threaten to disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans and which promise to unleash chaos and bedlam if other state courts and state officials follow Colorado's lead and exclude the likely Republican presidential nominee from their ballots.

Trump is indeed the clear frontrunner to win the Republican Party's presidential nomination, and he is also leading President Joe Biden in many 2024 general election polls.

Accordingly, it is no exaggeration to say that the Supreme Court justices' ruling in the case could have a huge impact on the 2024 election.

If the justices were to uphold the Fourteenth Amendment argument, then there is no doubt that other states would proceed to remove Trump from their 2024 ballots. On the other hand, if the justices reject this Fourteenth Amendment argument -which many legal experts expect them to do - then Trump stands a good chance of winning a second term.

What now?

The justices of the Supreme Court, according to ABC News, are currently scheduled to hear oral arguments in the case on Feb. 8, 2024.

Given the urgency of the matter - considering that the 2024 primaries have already begun and the 2024 general election is less than a year away - it is expected that the justices will rule on the matter relatively quickly, perhaps by the beginning of March.