Friday,
October 31, 2003
Happy Halloween! The Colorado Supreme Court will issue two decisions on Monday, November 3rd, CU v. Booth, No. 02SC738, and People v. Goodale, No. 02SA345. You can find the questions presented in these cases at this link. Still waiting for the redistricting decisions. Thursday, October 30, 2003 No new published decisions from the court of appeals today. The list of unpublished decisions issued today is here. Judge Peter Ney of the court of appeals is retiring in November. The Supreme Court Nominating Commission will interview applicants next week and will select three candidates to send on to Governor Owens. Governor Owens has 15 days to appoint one of the three. I'll keep you posted on the process. Judge Ney has my personal thanks for his great work on the court (and my hope for continued great work sitting as a retired judge). And I'm not just saying that because he wrote the opinion in the last criminal appeal I won. Monday, October 27, 2003 Parole can be revoked for single positive drug test. In its only decision announced today, the Colorado Supreme Court unanimously held that under the Substance Abuse Act, the Colorado Board of Parole has the authority to revoke parole and return a parolee to the Department of Corrections based on a single positive drug test. The board is authorized to revoke parole based on any positive drug test that occurs after the baseline test, but it is not required to do so. The court upheld parole revocation where a parolee had a single positive drug test following two negative tests. The parolee had argued the board lacked authority to revoke his parole based upon a single positive drug test. The decision, Whidden v. People, can be found here. The court did not grant any cert. petitions today. Still waiting . . . Colorado is anxiously awaiting the court's decision in the redistricting cases, which were argued September 8th. In the first of the cases, People ex rel. Salazar v. Davidson, No. 03SA133, the court will consider the following issue:
In the second case, Davidson v. Salazar, No. 03SA147, the court will consider the following issue:
These two original proceedings address fundamental issues concerning Colorado's redistricting process and the authority of the Attorney General of Colorado. As soon as the decision in these cases comes down, I'll post it. Thursday, October 23, 2003 The Colorado Court of Appeals issued published and unpublished decisions today. The case announcements for today can be found here. Bang the GAVEL slowly. Of particular interest today is the court of appeals' decision in Grossman v. Dean, involving the GAVEL ("Give A Vote to Every Legislator") amendment to the Colorado Constitution. Rep. Grossman, as Colorado House Minority Leader, had sponsored a campaign finance bill (HCR 1009) during the 2002 legislative session. The bill would have placed a campaign finance reform proposal on the 2002 ballot. The bill was killed in committee by use of a "supermotion"--a motion made out of order that a committee report favorably to the full House (the committee of the whole). In the case of HCR 1009, a supermotion was made by a Republican member of the House Majority who opposed the bill, but requested a "no" vote on the motion. A vote on the supermotion failed along party lines. Rep. Grossman sued Rep. Dean (then Speaker of the House), the Colorado General Assembly and others. The lawsuit asserted that the supermotion procedure violated the GAVEL amendment's requirement that every measure referred to a committee be considered on its merit and that no rule of either house deny the opportunity for consideration and a vote. The trial court had granted a motion to dismiss. The court of appeals reversed in part. The court first concluded that Rep. Grossman had standing to challenge the supermotion procedure because he had sponsored the bill. (The court affirmed the dismissal of Grossman's claims as to two other proposed bills which Grossman did not sponsor.) The court then held that the declaratory judgment claim was not moot because it was both capable of repetition yet evading review and raised issues of great public importance. The court also held that the claim did not raise a nonjusticiable political question, relying on part on the fact that declaratory relief, not an injunction, was sought. On the merits, the court held that the the GAVEL amendment's requirement of "consideration of the merits" means, "at a minimum, some interactive consideration by members of a committee and that each measure must be so considered before being voted on by the committee on its merits." Therefore, the court reversed the trial court's dismissal and remanded for further proceedings. I anticipate that the Colorado Supreme Court may weigh in on this issue in the near future. An interesting question not answered is whether a claim for injunctive relief could succeed, or whether the Colorado courts lack the power to enjoin the legislature, its members or committees in such circumstances. Your reward for burrowing through, or skipping over, my rather long-winded recap of the case is this link to the decision. Judge Loeb wrote it.
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