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Colorado Supreme Court Thread

Link to the decision

I don't know to what extent there are established precedents for when a topic is worthy of a mega-thread, but this decision seems like a big deal to me with a lot to discuss, so I'm putting this thread here as a place for discussion. If nobody agrees then I guess they just won't comment.

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I don’t have time to respond to everything but a few points:

  1. It is true that frequently the constitution is indeterminate. But there is a difference between government cannot abridge your ability speak (a prohibition on the government) and another that the government can rather arbitrarily prohibit you from running for office (a prohibition on both a person and the public). We generally require more effort by congress to curtail rights as opposed to the opposite because in the US freedom is the presumption.

  2. The idea that due process (and for that matter equal protection) don’t apply to political office ignores the arguments that we protect political rights for more than pretty much any other rights. See the famous footnote in Carolene Products. Could the government decide that anyone who supported BLM is ineligible to run for government on a whim without even rational basis review?

  3. One of the dissents did in fact raise the question of whether it applied to the office of the presidency (along with a bunch of other questions). This formed part of the dissent’s argument that it wasn’t self executing. Read closer before making sweeping statements.

  4. You are assuming that if dissent X argues A and dissent Y argues B that they are disagreeing. No. It could easily be that they are making a separate argument as to why it doesn’t apply. Having more than one compelling argument isn’t a bad thing.