The Colorado Supreme Court on Monday turned down three proposed ballot initiatives backed by Democrats that sought to open the door for a new congressional redistricting plan before the 2028 election.
The decisions mark another setback for Democratic attempts to respond to Republican-backed redistricting efforts taking place in several parts of the country.
All three proposals were backed by a group known as Coloradans for a Level Playing Field. One of the measures sought to temporarily suspend Colorado’s independent redistricting commission, which voters approved in 2018, and allow voters to decide on a revised congressional map to be used only for the 2028 and 2030 election cycles.
The remaining two proposals separated that objective into individual measures — one focused on pausing the commission’s authority, while the other aimed to introduce new congressional district boundaries.
Had the measures made it onto the November ballot and gained voter approval, a new congressional map would have been introduced beginning with the 2028 elections, potentially creating conditions for Democrats to secure seven of Colorado’s eight congressional seats. Democrats currently control four of those seats.
In three separate rulings, the state Supreme Court said the proposed ballot measures failed to comply with Colorado’s “single subject requirement,” which limits initiatives to addressing only one issue at a time.
Chief Justice Monica Marquez wrote in one of the unanimous rulings: “Changing the constitutionally mandated frequency of redistricting — however temporary the change — is not merely a mechanism to administer the new congressional district map.
“Instead, it represents a seismic shift to Colorado’s longstanding redistricting process enshrined in the state constitution.”
In another unanimous ruling, the court determined that dividing the original proposal into two separate ballot measures still did not satisfy the state’s single-subject requirement.
The heated battle over mid-cycle redistricting began last summer after Donald Trump urged Republican state legislators to redraw congressional boundaries in a bid to strengthen the party’s slim majority in the House of Representatives.
The debate intensified further this spring following a Supreme Court of the United States decision that weakened a major section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, prompting some Republican-led states to redraw districts with majority-Black populations that had been represented by Democrats.
Democrats have faced challenges in mounting a response, partly because some states under their influence, including Colorado, use independent redistricting commissions that restrict direct political control over the map-drawing process.
In Virginia, Democrats also advanced a comparable proposal that sought to bypass the state’s redistricting commission and introduce a congressional map viewed as more favourable to their party. While the referendum received narrow voter approval, the state Supreme Court later halted its implementation.
