Background
In 2018, Colorado voters adopted Amendment Y, which established an independent congressional redistricting commission and confined congressional redistricting to once per decade, in the year following the federal decennial census. The commission drew Colorado’s current eight-district congressional map in 2021 under those constitutional constraints.
During the 2026 election cycle, two sets of proponents submitted separate but substantially similar ballot initiatives — #240 (Nathan and Rasmussen) and #327 (Brackney and Carnes) — each seeking to accomplish two things simultaneously: amend the Colorado Constitution to temporarily allow mid-decade redistricting for the 2028 and 2030 election cycles, bypassing the commission’s existing authority and criteria, and enact in statute a specific competing congressional district map to be used during those cycles. Initiative #240 framed the proposal as a Democratic response to Republican-led redistricting in other states; Initiative #327 adopted a bipartisan framing. Both initiatives would restore the commission’s authority beginning with the 2031 redistricting cycle.
The Title Board approved titles for both initiatives after rehearing motions were filed. Petitioner Wayne Williams (pro se) and Petitioner Curtis Hubbard then invoked the Colorado Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction under § 1-40-107(2), C.R.S., arguing that each initiative contained multiple subjects in violation of Article V, Section 1(5.5) of the Colorado Constitution and § 1-40-106.5, C.R.S.
The Court’s Holding
Chief Justice Márquez, writing for a unanimous en banc court, reversed the Title Board’s actions in both cases. The court held that each initiative embraces two distinct and separate subjects — (1) temporarily allowing mid-decade redistricting outside the constitutional criteria and process established by Amendment Y, and (2) adopting a specific proposed congressional district map for the 2028 and 2030 elections — and that these subjects are not “necessarily and properly connected” as the single-subject rule requires.
The court rejected the proponents’ argument that mid-decade redistricting authorization was merely an implementation mechanism for the central purpose of adopting a new map. Characterizing the temporary suspension of the commission’s authority, the elimination of constitutional redistricting criteria (including the prohibition on partisan map-drawing and mandatory public hearings), and the shift of redistricting power from the commission to the electorate as a “seismic shift” in long-settled law, the court concluded those changes constitute a distinct purpose of their own — not a procedural detail ancillary to map adoption.
The court also found both initiatives susceptible to log rolling. Some voters might support the ability to redistrict mid-decade but oppose the specific partisan map proposed; others might want the particular map but prefer redistricting only once per decade. Bundling both subjects into a single measure could attract coalition support that neither subject could command on its own merits — exactly the result the single-subject requirement is designed to prevent. The court remanded to the Title Board with directions to strike the titles, ballot titles, and submission clauses and return the initiatives to their proponents.
Key Takeaways
- An initiative that both restructures the constitutional process governing redistricting and enacts a specific new district map addresses two distinct subjects; the process changes are not merely “implementing provisions” of the map adoption.
- Overly broad unifying labels — here, “congressional redistricting” — cannot paper over multiple distinct purposes; if such labels were sufficient, the single-subject rule’s anti-log-rolling function would be eviscerated.
- Even temporary changes to constitutionally entrenched redistricting procedures (including criteria, frequency, and institutional authority) count as significant independent subjects, not ministerial details, when those procedures were themselves voter-adopted constitutional amendments.
- The court will reverse Title Board title-setting “only in a clear case,” but both initiatives here plainly failed that deferential standard.
Why It Matters
The decision blocks two high-profile efforts to redraw Colorado’s congressional map outside the decennial cycle amid a national debate over partisan mid-decade redistricting. By holding that authorizing mid-decade redistricting and enacting a specific replacement map are legally separate subjects, the court makes clear that initiative proponents cannot accomplish both goals in a single measure — they must pursue each on its own merits or restructure their proposals entirely before returning to the Title Board.
More broadly, the ruling reinforces that Colorado’s single-subject requirement applies with real force to multi-pronged redistricting initiatives, even when the various components share a common political motivation. Attorneys advising ballot-initiative campaigns should treat significant changes to constitutionally established procedural frameworks as independent subjects requiring separate measures whenever those changes are not strictly necessary to implement a single, narrowly defined policy objective.