There was excellent news last month. It appears the Plaintiffs have decided not to move forward with the existential threat to TABOR, ending the Kerr vs. Polis lawsuit!
The TABOR Foundation has been coordinating a national coalition of 19 freedom organizations that were ready to submit a friend-of-the-court brief to the US Supreme Court. We won’t have to write it after all.
When the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals (sitting en banc) issued its ruling last December that was favorable to our position, you could have bet your bottom dollar that the Plaintiffs would continue the lawsuit. Many left-of-center people and organizations have been pushing this case for over a decade.
The next step in the process would have been for Plaintiffs to petition the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari asking the Court to take up the case (for a second time). Such a petition had to have been filed by a March 14 deadline, but was not.
The Judgment dismissed the case for failing to state a claim upon which the Court could grant relief for the remaining Plaintiffs, who consisted of a few school districts and other political subdivisions of the State of Colorado. Originally the Plaintiffs also included individual legislators and citizens. The individual legislators had been denied standing to sue because they only alleged institutional injuries to the government and none to themselves as legislators. And the individual citizens did not even allege whether or how TABOR injured them personally.
With respect to the school districts and other political subdivisions, the Court ruled that the US Constitution does not provide political subdivisions with rights against their parent states. Moreover, none of the Plaintiffs identified any other law providing them with a claim for relief to challenge TABOR.
The Court of Appeal’s dismissal was “without prejudice,” so the Plaintiffs could try a new filing. We’ll keep watch just in case.
The heart of the Plaintiffs’ legal theory, that citizens are prohibited from placing restrictions on certain legislative powers, was extremely dangerous to the fundamental principles of limited government.
Friends of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights can breathe a sigh of relief and celebrate, for now.
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