Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca10-06-01511/USCOURTS-ca10-06-01511-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 950
Nature of Suit: Constitutionality of State Statutes
Cause of Action: 

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FILED

United States Court of Appeals

Tenth Circuit

January 29, 2008

Elisabeth A. Shumaker

Clerk of Court

PUBLISH

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

TENTH CIRCUIT

COALITION FOR EQUAL RIGHTS,

INC., a Colorado corporation; SHARI

WARREN, doing business as Spirit

Keeper,

Plaintiffs-Appellants,

v. No. 06-1511

BILL RITTER, JR., Governor, State of

Colorado; JOHN SUTHERS, Colorado

Attorney General; DONALD MARES,

Executive Director, Colorado Department

of Labor and Employment, PETER

WEIR, Executive Director, Colorado

Department of Public Safety, JAMES

MARTIN, Executive Director, Colorado

Department of Public Health and

Environment, CARY KENNEDY,

Colorado State Treasurer, all in their

official capacities; SCOTT WILLIAM

STOREY, in his official capacity as

District Attorney, First Judicial District;

MICHAEL RICHARD MORRISSEY, in

his official capacity as District Attorney,

Second Judicial District; LEE ALLEN

HAWKE, in his official capacity as

District Attorney, Third Judicial District;

JOHN R. NEWSOME, in his official

capacity as District Attorney, Fourth

Judicial District; MARK D. HURLBERT,

in his official capacity as District

Attorney, Fifth Judicial District; CRAIG

STEPHEN WESTBERG, in his official

capacity as District Attorney, Sixth

Judicial District; MYRL SERRA, in his

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official capacity as District Attorney,

Seventh Judicial District; LARRY R.

ABRAHAMSON, in his official capacity

as District Attorney, Eighth Judicial

District; MARTIN BEESON, in his

official capacity as District Attorney,

Ninth Judicial District; WILLIAM

THIEBAUT, JR., in his official capacity

as District Attorney, Tenth Judicial

District; MOLLY K. CHILSON, in her

official capacity as District Attorney,

Eleventh Judicial District; PETER L.

COMAR, in his official capacity as

District Attorney, Twelfth Judicial

District; ROBERT E. WATSON, in his

official capacity as District Attorney,

Thirteenth Judicial District; BONNIE S.

ROESINK, in her official capacity as

District Attorney, Fourteenth Judicial

District; MICHAEL JOHN DAVIDSON,

in his official capacity as District

Attorney, Fifteenth Judicial District;

RODNEY DANN FOURACRE, in his

official capacity as District Attorney,

Sixteenth Judicial District; DONALD

SPENCE QUICK, in his official capacity

as District Attorney, Seventeenth Judicial

District; CAROL A. CHAMBERS, in her

official capacity as District Attorney,

Eighteenth Judicial District; KENNETH

R. BUCK, in his official capacity as

District Attorney, Nineteenth Judicial

District; MARY T. LACY, in her official

capacity as District Attorney, Twentieth

Judicial District; PETER G. HAUZINER,

in his official capacity as District

Attorney, Twenty-First Judicial District;

JAMES W. WILSON, in his official

capacity as District Attorney, TwentySecond Judicial District; and THE STATE

OF COLORADO,

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Defendants-Appellees.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLORADO

(D.C. No. 06-cv-1145-LTB-PAC)

Joel M. Specter (Joseph F. Becker and William Perry Pendley on the briefs), Mountain

States Legal Foundation, Lakewood, Colorado, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

Jason R. Dunn, Colorado Deputy Attorney General, Denver, Colorado [attorney for State

Defendants] (Henry Richard Reeve, Deputy District Attorney, Second Judicial District,

Denver, Colorado, [attorney for District Attorneys except William Thiebaut, Jr.], with

him on the brief), for Defendant-Appellees.

Before BRISCOE, EBEL and MURPHY, Circuit Judges.

BRISCOE, Circuit Judge.

Plaintiffs Coalition for Equal Rights, Inc. (Coalition) and Shari Warren, d/b/a

Spirit Keeper, appeal from the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the

Governor of the State of Colorado and other Colorado state officials on plaintiffs’ claims

challenging the constitutionality of Colorado’s Clean Indoor Air Act. We exercise

jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and affirm.

I.

The Colorado Clean Indoor Air Act

On March 27, 2006, the Colorado legislature enacted, and then-Governor Bill

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Owens signed into law, the Colorado Clean Indoor Air Act (CCIA), Colo. Rev. Stat. § 25-

14-201, et seq. By its own terms, the CCIA became effective on July 1, 2006. 

The Colorado legislature offered the following rationale for enacting the CCIA:

The general assembly hereby finds and determines that it is in the best

interest of the people of this state to protect nonsmokers from involuntary

exposure to environmental tobacco smoke in most indoor areas open to the

public, public meetings, food service establishments, and places of

employment. The general assembly further finds and determines that a

balance should be struck between the health concerns of nonconsumers of

tobacco products and the need to minimize unwarranted governmental

intrusion into, and regulation of, private spheres of conduct and choice with

respect to the use or nonuse of tobacco products in certain designated public

areas and in private places. Therefore, the general assembly hereby

declares that the purpose of [the CCIA] is to preserve and improve the

health, comfort, and environment of the people of this state by limiting

exposure to tobacco smoke.

Colo. Rev. Stat. § 25-14-202 (“Legislative declaration”). 

Consistent with this legislative declaration, the CCIA provides that, “in order to

reduce the levels of exposure to environmental tobacco smoke, smoking shall not be

permitted and no person shall smoke in any indoor area . . . .” Colo. Rev. Stat. § 25-14-

204(1). The CCIA expressly exempts from this general prohibition a variety of indoor

areas including, of relevance here, “airport smoking concession[s],” id. § 25-11-205(1)(f),

which it defines as

a bar or restaurant, or both, in a public airport with regularly scheduled

domestic and international commercial passenger flights, in which bar or

restaurant smoking is allowed in a fully enclosed and independently

ventilated area by the terms of the concession.

Id. § 25-14-203(1).

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In addition to its general prohibition on smoking in indoor areas, the CCIA also

makes it unlawful for (1) “a person who owns, manages, operates, or otherwise controls

the use of” any indoor premises subject to the CCIA “to violate any provision” of the

CCIA, and (2) “a person to smoke in an area where smoking is prohibited” by the CCIA. 

Colo. Rev. Stat. § 25-14-208(1), (2). Violations of these provisions are considered “class

2 petty offense[s]” under Colorado law and are penalized with escalating fines (from

$200 to $500). Id. § (3).

The district court proceedings

The Coalition is a nonprofit Colorado corporation that represents the interests of its

more than five hundred members, who include independent bar and tavern owners,

bowling alleys, billiard halls, bingo parlors, military service clubs, restaurants, liquor

stores, fraternal orders, trade associations, professional air cleaners, amusement device

retailers, and individual citizens. Shari Warren is a Colorado citizen who owns and

operates the Spirit Keeper, a tavern located in Black Forest, Colorado, that is licensed to

serve alcoholic beverages.

On June 15, 2006, plaintiffs Coalition and Warren filed this action against the

Governor of the State of Colorado and other Colorado state officials challenging the

constitutionality of the CCIA. In pertinent part, plaintiffs alleged that the CCIA violated

their rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United

States Constitution and their right to equal protection implicit in the Due Process Clause

of the Colorado Constitution because it prohibited indoor smoking in the establishments

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1 Plaintiffs’ equal protection claims also cited the then-existing CCIA exemption

for licensed casinos. Because that exemption has since been eliminated by the Colorado

legislature, those portions of plaintiffs’ claims have been rendered moot. E.g., U. S.

Dep’t of Treasury v. Galioto, 477 U.S. 556, 559-60 (1986) (concluding that equal

protection challenge to federal firearms statute treating certain felons more favorably than

former mental patients was moot after Congress amended statute to eliminate

discrimination).

2 In the “Summary of Argument” section of their opening appellate brief, plaintiffs

state that enforcement of the CCIA has resulted in violations of “the Equal Protection

Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and equal protection

implicit in Article II, § 25, of the Colorado Constitution, that is, its due process provision,

and violation of the ‘special legislation’ clause of Article V, § 25 of the Colorado

Constitution.” Aplt. Br. at 13. In the remainder of their brief, however, plaintiffs focus

almost exclusively on their equal protection claims. Indeed, the only reference in the

remainder of their brief to any other claim is the two-sentence concluding paragraph that

suggests, in passing, that the CCIA runs afoul of Article V, § 21 of the Colorado

Constitution, which mandates that bills contain only one subject as expressed in the title

of the legislation. To the extent plaintiffs intended to appeal the district court’s grant of

summary judgment on issues other than their equal protection claims, we summarily

affirm the district court’s ruling.

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owned, operated and/or serviced by plaintiffs, yet granted an exemption from the

prohibition to airport smoking concessions.1

 The parties subsequently filed cross motions

for summary judgment, and, on October 19, 2006, the district court issued an order

denying plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, granting defendants’ motion for

summary judgment, and dismissing the action.

II.

In their appeal, plaintiffs challenge the district court’s grant of summary judgment

on their equal protection claims.2

 We review de novo the district court’s grant of

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3 As noted by defendants, equal protection analysis under the Colorado

Constitution appears to be identical to equal protection analysis under the United States

Constitution. E.g., People v. McKnight, 617 P.2d 1178, 1185-86 (Colo. 1980). Thus, our

analysis of plaintiffs’ claim under the Equal Protection Clause of the United States

Constitution controls their similar claim under the Colorado Constitution.

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summary judgment. Hoffmann-Pugh v. Keenan, 338 F.3d 1136, 1138 (10th Cir. 2003). 

Likewise, we review de novo challenges to the constitutionality of a statute. Id. at 1138-39.

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment mandates that “[n]o

State shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” 

U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1. “This provision creates no substantive rights,” and instead

“embodies a general rule that States must treat like cases alike but may treat unlike cases

accordingly.” Vacco v. Quill, 521 U.S. 793, 799 (1997). In other words, “[t]he Equal

Protection Clause does not forbid classifications. It simply keeps governmental

decisionmakers from treating differently persons who are in all relevant respects alike.”3

Nordlinger v. Hahn, 505 U.S. 1, 10 (1992).

Unless a statute being challenged on equal protection grounds “jeopardizes

exercise of a fundamental right or categorizes on the basis of an inherently suspect

characteristic,” id., it will be “presumed to be valid and will be sustained if the

classification drawn by the statute is rationally related to a legitimate state interest,” City

of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Ctr., 473 U.S. 432, 440 (1985). Moreover, the Supreme

Court, by its own admission, “allows the States wide latitude” “[w]hen social or

economic legislation is at issue,” id., and “ha[s] been most likely to apply rational basis

review to hold a law unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause where . . . the

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challenged legislation inhibits personal relationships,” Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558,

580 (2003), (O’Connor, J., concurring). 

In light of these principles, it is beyond dispute that the State of Colorado must be

afforded wide latitude in its decision to distinguish between the establishments owned,

operated, and/or serviced by plaintiffs and the airport smoking concessions that are

currently exempted from the CCIA. The CCIA involves social legislation, does not

jeopardize the exercise of any fundamental rights, and in no way categorizes on the basis

of inherently suspect characteristics. See Castaways Backwater Café, Inc. v. Fla. Dep’t of

Bus. & Prof’l Regulations Div., 214 F. App’x. 955, 956 (11th Cir. 2007) (reaching same

conclusion with respect to Florida Clean Indoor Air Act). 

The district court concluded, and we agree, that the State of Colorado has offered a

rational basis for its distinction between airport smoking concessions and the

establishments owned, operated, and/or serviced by plaintiffs. To begin with, the State

notes that all qualifying airport smoking concessions under the CCIA are located within

the Denver International Airport (DIA) because it is the only airport within the State of

Colorado that offers regularly scheduled domestic and international commercial

passenger flights. In turn, the State notes that, in contrast to the patrons of plaintiffs’

establishments, “the vast majority of DIA visitors are nonresidents of Colorado, in the

state for only a few minutes or hours while waiting for a connecting flight.” Aple. Br. at

12. Further, the State notes, those DIA visitors who are smokers would, without the

availability of airport smoking concessions, “have no options as to where they can

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smoke,” id. at 7, because they “have no real opportunity or ability to travel to a location

outside the DIA area,” id. at 21. This obviously contrasts with most, if not all, of the

patrons of plaintiffs’ establishments, who, even with the enactment of the CCIA, have

various options as to where they can smoke. Lastly, the State notes that the smoking

lounges at DIA, in contrast to plaintiffs’ establishments, “are owned and operated by the

City and County of Denver, a home rule city and county that has independent authority to

take action to protect the public from secondhand smoke in city-owned facilities, which it

has done.” Id. at 12-13 (citing Denver Municipal Code § 24-301, et seq. (2006)).

In their appeal, plaintiffs do not seriously dispute any of these bases for distinction. 

Instead, they contend the district court “erred by applying a toothless and, in fact,

erroneous rational basis test” in analyzing and rejecting their equal protection claims. 

Aplt. Br. at 13. More precisely, plaintiffs complain that the district court examined only

whether the distinctions drawn by the Colorado legislature in the CCIA were “irrational

and completely unrelated to any conceivable policy goal.” Order at 10. According to

plaintiffs, the rational basis test, properly formulated and applied, asks whether the

classification at issue has “‘a fair and substantial relation to the object of the legislation . .

. .’” Aplt. Br. at 17 (quoting Johnson v. Robison, 415 U.S. 361, 374 (1974)).

Although the plaintiffs have accurately quoted the language from the Supreme

Court’s 1974 decision in Johnson, that language does not correctly represent the Court’s

current view of the rational-basis standard, nor, does it appear, that it ever represented the

controlling standard. In United States Railroad Retirement Board v. Fritz, 449 U.S. 166

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4 Indeed, in its post-Fritz cases, the Court appears to have confined the “fair and

substantial relation” test to those equal protection cases requiring “heightened review,”

rather than rational-basis review. E.g., United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515, 591 n.6

(1996) (Scalia, J., dissenting) (noting that the “substantial relationship” standard is

utilized in “intermediate scrutiny,” rather than under rational basis review); Cleburne, 473

U.S. at 441 (noting that heightened equal protection review examines whether the

restrictions or classifications at issue “‘are substantially related to a legitimate state

interest’” (quoting Mills v. Habluetzel, 456 U.S. 91, 99 (1982))).

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(1980), the Court reviewed its “pronouncements in this area” from the period of 1911

through 1980, and acknowledged that the standards it had applied “ha[d] not been

altogether consistent . . . .” Id. at 174; see id. at 176 n. 10 (“The most arrogant legal

scholar would not claim that all of these cases[, i.e., from 1911 through 1980,] applied a

uniform or consistent test under equal protection principles.”). In doing so, the Court

noted that it had at times applied an extremely deferential formulation of the standard

(asking only whether any state of facts reasonably could be conceived that would sustain

the legislation), and at other times had employed the “fair and substantial relation to the

object of the legislation” standard (i.e., the one being promoted by plaintiffs in this

appeal). Id. at 174-75 (citing F.S. Royster Guano Co. v. Virginia, 253 U.S. 412, 415

(1920) (employing the “fair and substantial relation” standard)). Importantly, the Court

clarified the issue by holding that, where social or economic regulations are at issue, the

proper rational-basis test is the more deferential one that asks simply whether there are

plausible reasons for the legislative action. Id. at 176-79. Further, none of the Court’s

post-Fritz cases have disturbed, or otherwise placed into doubt, this clarification.4

 Thus,

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plaintiffs are mistaken in suggesting that the “fair and substantial relation” test is the

controlling rational-basis standard.

In sum, we conclude that the district court applied a proper formulation of the

rational-basis test. We further conclude, as did the district court, that the Colorado

legislature, by exempting airport smoking concessions from the CCIA’s operation,

rationally distinguished those concessions from the majority of other indoor facilities in

the state that are open to the public, including the establishments owned, operated, and/or

serviced by plaintiffs.

The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.

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