Hoo doggie, that was a most disputatious unanimous opinion. The vote was really 5-4 on the reasoning; it was unanimous in result only.
A unanimous reversal was predicted here and by more learned others. And shepherded by the Chief Justice as this appears to be, the writing certainly reads like it is Chief Justice Roberts', although since the opinion is per curiam, the majority author is not identified. It was thought that in this momentous decision at this portentous time that a court divided on result would do great disservice to the country and to the Court itself, that Roberts would see to it that the opinion was unanimous, and answered only,
...a single question: “Did the Colorado Supreme Court err in ordering President Trump excluded from the 2024 presidential primary ballot?”
And really, with due disrespect to Professors Baude, Paulsen, and fellow travelers like Prof. Tribe, the answer to that single question was easy: Yes.
Why then the disputes? Why three sets of separate opinions to answer a single question with a single answer? Because, according to the others, the conservative majority (Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh) treated of more questions than that single one and gave answers to the unasked. It's a deeply divided court with aggressive, metastatic conservatives in surfeit so as to be able to lose one, in this case Barrett.
Roberts (or whomever, but I am certain as I can be that it's Roberts) tries mightily to paper over the divide, but begins curiously with a gesture to partisanship past.
The judgment of the Colorado Supreme Court therefore cannot stand. 1
All nine Members of the Court agree with that result. Our colleagues writing separately further agree with many of the reasons this opinion provides for reaching it. [citations omitted] So far as we can tell, they object only to our taking into account the distinctive way Section 3 works and the fact that Section 5 vests in Congress the power to enforce it. These are not the only reasons the States lack power to enforce this particular constitutional provision with respect to federal offices. But they are important ones, and it is the combination of all the reasons set forth in this opinion—not, as some of our colleagues would have it, just one particular rationale—that resolves this case. In our view, each of these reasons is necessary to provide a complete explanation for the judgment the Court unanimously reaches.
The judgment of the Colorado Supreme Court is reversed. 2
The mandate shall issue forthwith.
Barrett writes next, in the first "dissent", but her concurrence reads to me as if it was written in response to the tenor of the language in the opinion joined in by the three liberals, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Brown Jackson. Since I think this, I will first quote Barrett's opening statement of concurrence with result and then quote the language of the liberals that I think she objects to, and then her reaction.
I join Parts I and II–B 3 of the Court’s opinion. I agree that States lack the power to enforce Section 3 against Presidential candidates. That principle is sufficient to resolve this case, and I would decide no more than that. ...
Barrett recognizes that the majority has put her and the other justices in a bind:
The majority’s choice of a different path leaves the remaining Justices with a choice of how to respond.
This is how the liberals responded:
In this case, the Court must decide whether Colorado may keep a Presidential candidate off the ballot on the ground that he is an oathbreaking insurrectionist...
...
The majority announces that a disqualification for insurrection can occur only when Congress enacts a particular kind of legislation pursuant to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. ...We cannot join an
opinion 4 that decides momentous and difficult issues unnecessarily, and we therefore concur only in the judgment.
...
Yet the Court continues on to resolve questions not before us. In a case involving no federal action whatsoever, the Court opines on how federal enforcement of Section 3 must proceed. ...These
musings are as inadequately supported as they are gratuitous.
... Section 3 provides that when an oathbreaking insurrectionist is disqualified, “Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.” ...
...
[The majority] simply creates a special rule for the insurrection disability in Section 3. ...
...
Ultimately, under the guise of providing a more “complete explanation for the judgment,” ante, at 13, the majority resolves many unsettled questions about Section 3. It forecloses judicial enforcement of that provision, such as might occur when a party is prosecuted by an insurrectionist and raises a defense on that score. ...By resolving these and other questions, the majority attempts to insulate all alleged insurrectionists from future challenges to their holding federal office. ...The Court today needed to resolve only a single question: whether an individual State may keep a Presidential candidate found to have engaged in insurrection off its ballot. The majority resolves much more than the case before us. ...
Section 3 serves an important, though rarely needed, role in our democracy. The American people have power to vote for and elect candidates for national office, and that is a great and glorious thing. The men who drafted and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, however, had witnessed an “insurrection [and] rebellion” to defend slavery. §3. They wanted to ensure that those who had participated in that insurrection, and in possible future insurrections, could not return to prominent roles. Today, the majority goes beyond the necessities of this case to limit how Section 3 can bar an oathbreaking insurrectionist from becoming President. Although we agree that Colorado cannot enforce Section 3, we protest 5 the majority’s effort to use this case to define the limits of federal enforcement of that provision. Because we would decide only the issue before us, we concur only in the judgment.
Barrett replies, alarmed and plaintive:
In my judgment, this is not the time to amplify disagreement with stridency. The Court has settled a politically charged issue in the volatile season of a Presidential election. Particularly in this circumstance, writings on the Court should turn the national temperature down, not up. For present
purposes, our differences are far less important than our unanimity: All nine Justices agree on the outcome of this case. That is the message Americans should take home.
I think that is the message that Americans will take home, but it is not the message that they should take home, nor the message that all nine of the Supreme Court Justices will take home with them. There are very hard feelings on the Court, as hard as there are in the country.
1"This will not stand. This will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait."
2 See, he (the majority) didn't have to echo Bush on Kuwait. It was duplicative, gratuitous, intentionally partisan wording.
3 Thereby dissenting from II A which reads as follows:
II
A
Proposed by Congress in 1866 and ratified by the States in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment “expand[ed] federal power at the expense of state autonomy” and thus “fundamentally altered the balance of state and federal power struck by the Constitution.” Seminole Tribe of Fla. v. Florida, 517 U. S. 44, 59 (1996); see also Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339, 345 (1880). Section 1 of the Amendment, for instance, bars the States from “depriv[ing] any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” or “deny[ing] to any person . . . the equal protection of the laws.” And Section 5 confers on Congress “power to enforce”those prohibitions, along with the other provisions of the Amendment, “by appropriate legislation.”
Section 3 of the Amendment likewise restricts state autonomy, but through different means. It was designed to help ensure an enduring Union by preventing former Confederates from returning to power in the aftermath of the Civil War. See, e.g., Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 2544 (1866) (statement of Rep. Stevens, warning that with-out appropriate constitutional reforms “yelling secessionists and hissing copperheads” would take seats in the House); id., at 2768 (statement of Sen. Howard, lamenting prospect of a “State Legislature . . . made up entirely of disloyal elements” absent a disqualification provision). Section 3 aimed to prevent such a resurgence by barring from office “those who, having once taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, afterward went into rebellion against the Government of the United States.” Cong. Globe, 41st Cong., 1st Sess., 626 (1869) (statement of Sen. Trumbull).
Section 3 works by imposing on certain individuals a preventive and severe penalty—disqualification from holding a wide array of offices—rather than by granting rights to all. It is therefore necessary, as Chief Justice Chase con cluded and the Colorado Supreme Court itself recognized, to “ ‘ascertain[ ] what particular individuals are embraced’ ” by the provision. App. to Pet. for Cert. 53a (quoting Griffin’s Case, 11 F. Cas. 7, 26 (No. 5,815) (CC Va. 1869) (Chase, Circuit Justice)). Chase went on to explain that “[t]o accomplish this ascertainment and ensure effective results, proceedings, evidence, decisions, and enforcements of decisions, more or less formal, are indispensable.” Id., at 26. For its part, the Colorado Supreme Court also concluded that there must be some kind of “determination” that Section 3 applies to a particular person “before the disqualification holds meaning.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 53a.
The Constitution empowers Congress to prescribe how those determinations should be made. The relevant provision is Section 5, which enables Congress, subject of course to judicial review, to pass “appropriate legislation” to “enforce” the Fourteenth Amendment. See City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U. S. 507, 536 (1997). Or as Senator Howard put it at the time the Amendment was framed, Section 5 “casts upon Congress the responsibility of seeing to it, for the future, that all the sections of the amendment are carried out in good faith.” Cong. Globe 39th Cong., 1st Sess.,at 2768.
Congress’s Section 5 power is critical when it comes to Section 3. Indeed, during a debate on enforcement legislation less than a year after ratification, Sen. Trumbull noted that “notwithstanding [Section 3] . . . hundreds of men [were] holding office” in violation of its terms. Cong. Globe, 41st Cong., 1st Sess., at 626. The Constitution, Trumbull noted, “provide[d] no means for enforcing” the disqualification, necessitating a “bill to give effect to the fundamental law embraced in the Constitution.” Ibid. The enforcement mechanism Trumbull championed was later enacted as part of the Enforcement Act of 1870, “pursuant to the power conferred by §5 of the [Fourteenth] Amendment.” General Building Contractors Assn., Inc. v. Pennsylvania, 458 U. S. 375, 385 (1982); see 16 Stat. 143–144
4. What is that if not a dissent?
5. "Protest" is obviously a much stronger term than "dissent". "Protest" is the language of the street. That is how strongly the liberals "dissent" from the majority.