Angry messages started rolling into the Colorado Supreme Court in December after a majority of judges ruled that President Donald Trump was not eligible to appear on the Colorado primary ballot because he had “engaged in” insurrection. Soon the FBI was investigating threats of violence because some Trump supporters had taken their legal disagreement with the court too far.
Now, Colorado’s Supreme Court Chief Justice Monica M. Márquez is being targeted again, this time by groups urging Colorado voters not to retain her on the bench in November’s election. Márquez, who grew up in Grand Junction and was appointed by Gov. Bill Ritter to the Supreme Court in 2010, is the only Supreme Court judge on the ballot this fall who joined the majority opinion in Anderson v. Griswold.
Coloradans should vote to retain Márquez and send a message to those wielding her retention as a political cudgel that far-right extremists cannot bully Colorado justices.
The four justices were sound in their finding last year that Trump had orchestrated a vast insurrection attempt that culminated with the violent Jan. 6 attempt to prevent Congress from seating Joe Biden as president.
“We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us,” wrote the four-justice majority late last year. “We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”
In other words, the justices stood strong against threats and angry messages flooding into the courts. The majority applied the clear language of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, a guarantee that Americans not be governed by someone who had betrayed the cornerstone of American democracy by treason or insurrection. The facts of the case had been litigated in a lower court that also found Trump had engaged in insurrection.
A national social issue non-profit called the Article III Project launched a campaign not to retain Márquez.
“Monica Márquez attempted to disenfranchise over 550,000 Colorado Trump primary voters,” Mike Davis, founder and president of the nonprofit group, told The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel earlier this month. “She doesn’t respect democracy and the rule of law. So it’s time for Colorado voters to fire Monica Márquez in this November 5th election.”
This is utter nonsense.
The U.S. Supreme Court did strike down their decision with a unanimous ruling that states could not enforce the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution on their own. But, this ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court was based entirely on their interpretation of Section 5 of the 14th Amendment, giving Congress the power to enforce the post-Civil War amendment. The justices lamented the “chaos” that would come if states were able to enforce the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment without a federal process spelled out in legislation for doing so. Perhaps, if the U.S. Supreme Court had more courage, they would have been less worried about “chaos” and more worried with enforcing the U.S. Constitution faithfully.
In other words, Colorado’s justices did what the nation’s top justices were too afraid to do – stand up for the amendment as written, no matter the difficulty that could ensue if enforced by a state-court.
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We would ignore this fringe movement to punish a Colorado justice for her part in a sound legal ruling if it weren’t for a compounding threat to her retention. The Colorado Springs Gazette recommended this week that none of the three justices up for consideration be retained for office.
Their logic is far more sound — the Colorado Supreme Court recently weathered a tremendous scandal under now-retired Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Coats. Combined the two efforts may have the unintended consequences of ejecting a very fine justice from Colorado’s Supreme Court.
We too have expressed discontent with Coats’ involvement in the scandal, and frustration with the lack of transparency into the investigation afforded by his replacement Justice Brian Boatright who is also up for retention this year. But Coats is long gone from the court and there is no evidence that Boatright or any of the other justices were aware of the hush-money contract awarded to a former judicial employee.
We hope voters retain Márquez, Boatright and Justice Maria E. Berkenkotter.
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