There are three problems with the Court taking a case deciding whether Donald Trump is disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
As I have previously written, the Supreme Court should take a case to resolve, before the primary voting begins, whether Donald Trump is disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment (and it should rule that he is not disqualified as a matter of law). But there are three problems with the Court taking such a case. First, the justices clearly would rather not hear this issue. Second, if the case comes up from federal court, someone must have standing to sue — an ordinary voter can’t, but a competing candidate might. The same problem would exist with an appeal from a state-court ruling favoring Trump, because subject-matter jurisdiction must always exist even for an appeal in federal court — although if a state court ruled against Trump, then he would of course have standing to appeal. Third is the question of evidence: In general, the Court exists to decide questions of law, not to act like a jury and resolve disputed matters of fact. Thus, even if the Court were to weigh in, it would prefer to do so after some lower court has developed a full factual record after a hearing. All of these obstacles conspire against the Court getting the right case quickly.
It may have that opportunity when the Minnesota supreme court decides the first major challenge, which is being argued November 2, although it does not appear that the state court will have an evidentiary record before it. In the meantime, the Court yesterday refused to hear the first case brought in a petition for certiorari, by write-in presidential candidate John Anthony Castro. Castro’s case had the advantage of being brought by a nominal competitor, but he’s a fringe candidate representing himself in the lawsuit and the lower federal courts dismissed the case on standing grounds without a hearing, so the Court may well have felt that it was not going to get the best vehicle to address the issue.