Court Opinion

ID: 9796423
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:57:17.417737+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:50:13.534205
License: Public Domain

Justice COATS,
dissenting.
Onee more the majority resorts to the single-subject requirement to block consideration of a proposal to amend the state constitution by voter approval. I have written at length on a number of occasions about not only our lack of uniformity in applying the single-subject requirement but our willingness to, in fact, construe the term "subject" as being so elastic as to leave to this court the virtually unfettered discretion to either approve or disapprove any popularly initiated ballot measure at will. See, eg., In re Title & Ballot Title & Submission Clause for 2005-2006 # 55, 138 P.3d 273, 283-85 (Colo. 2006) (Coats, J., dissenting); In re Title, Ballot Title & Submission Clause for 2005-2006 # 74, 136 P.3d 237, 243-44 (Colo.2006) (Coats, J., dissenting); In re Title, Ballot Title & Submission Clause for 2003-2004 # 32 & # 33, 76 P.3d 460, 471-72 (Colo.2003) (Coats, J., dissenting). Unlike those occasions, however, on which the majority offered some new and creative basis for parsing and subdividing the term "subject," here the majority offers no such explanation.
After dutifully reciting the requirement's dual concerns for secreting unrelated provisions and combining provisions too unpopular to succeed on their own, the majority simply identifies two clearly articulated provisions of the initiative and without offering any evidence that the inclusion of one or the other was intended, or likely, to deceive the voting public or that both were deliberately joined in a single initiative because neither would be *1088likely to succeed on its own, declares them separate subjects. Despite the fact that long and detailed initiatives, written at a level of abstraction more appropriate for legislation or even administrative regulation, admittedly lend themselves more easily to targeting for single-subject objection, the Title Board was able to fix a title reflecting the initiative's coherent subject of raising fands for maintaining the availability of the waters of the state and protecting from legislative interference the bodies designated to administer those funds. Subject only to judicial review for an abuse of its discretion, the Title Board is entrusted with the obligation to ensure that popularly initiated measures contain a single subject. See § 1-40-106.5(8), C.R.S. (2009).
In the past, I have also expressed my concern whether it is possible for judicial officers, however conscientious, to apply a standard as amorphous as the majority obviously considers the single-subject requirement to be without conforming it to their own policy preferences. I believe the experience of this jurisdiction bears out the validity of my concerns. In the absence of some indication of a deliberate intent to deceive the voting public by secreting unrelated provisions or to combine, for voting strength purposes, disparate provisions that have already failed or are likely to fail on their own, I will therefore not vote to overturn a determination of the Title Board on single-subject grounds.
Because I believe again today that the judgment of the court strips Colorado voters of a fundamental prerogative reserved to them by the state constitution, without protecting them in any meaningful way from either of the evils contemplated by the single-subject requirement, I would affirm the action of the Title Board. I therefore respectfully dissent.