Colorado conservative group files suit challenging tax-cutting ballot language

A Colorado conservative group filed a federal lawsuit against the Secretary of State and Gov. Jared Polis on Monday, challenging a law passed by the legislature two years ago that requires tax-cutting ballot measures warn voters about the potential impact of lost revenue.

Advance Colorado, together with several individual residents, argue that the law violates the First Amendment and forces groups promoting certain ballot measures to accept language that the groups may disagree with. Advance Colorado has been approved to gather signatures for two tax-cutting ballot measures this year, and it argued that the warning label it must present to voters doesn’t accurately reflect the impact those tax cuts would have on state funding.

The law passed in 2021, and it requires that any ballot measure that proposes to cut taxes also include language noting that the proposal would reduce state funding for specific programs like education or health care. One of Advance Colorado’s initiatives, for instance, would cut the sales tax. State regulators required the initiative to note that, if passed, it would “reduce funding for state expenditures that include but are not limited to education, health care policy and financing, and higher education by an estimated $17.7 million in tax revenue.”

But Advance Colorado argued that its initiative won’t hurt any state programs because it’s well within the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights’ refund threshold, meaning it’s excess money that won’t touch the state budget.

Supporters of the law have cast it as an attempt to make clear to voters the impact of tax cuts. But opponents say it’s an attempt to mislead.

“Politicians at the Capitol have unconstitutionally stacked the deck against citizen-driven ballot initiatives that reduce taxes,” Michael Fields, the president of Advance Colorado, said in a statement, “and Advance Colorado is suing to ensure that ballot initiatives generated by citizens are described accurately on the ballot and not subject to compelled speech or government-enforced lies.”

A Polis spokesman declined to comment on pending litigation Tuesday morning. A spokeswoman for Secretary of State Jena Griswold did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Advance Colorado filed the lawsuit alongside former U.S. Sen. Hank Brown; three county commissioners from across the state; and a ballot initiative proponent from Arapahoe County. They’re asking a federal judge to rule that the law violates the First Amendment and to require Griswold to reconvene the state body that regulates ballot measures to strip the language from Advance’s two proposals.

When it was passed, the law had the support of education groups like the Colorado Education Association, plus progressive organizations like the Bell Policy Center. When Polis signed the bill into law in 2021, he said in a statement that he wanted to “ensure that voters know what they are voting on — that the ballot language is a fair and accurate description of any proposed ballot measure.” He said he thought the impact of tax changes — on people and on the government — “should be included in the ballot title for any tax policy proposal.”

Still, the governor wrote that he was “wary of the legislature encroaching too far into the (ballot) initiative process.”

The lawsuit is the latest in a spree of recent political litigation in Colorado. Advance Colorado sued the state legislature and its Democratic leaders in July, accusing them of violating transparency laws via the use of a private voting system to weigh fiscal priorities. The Colorado Republican Party last week sued Griswold in a bid to close the party’s primaries. Before that, two House Democrats filed a lawsuit against the House, its leaders and its Republican and Democratic caucuses, alleging they were flouting open-meeting requirements.

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