Republicans scored a major victory Monday after the Colorado Supreme Court unanimously struck down a series of ballot measures that would have paved the way for a dramatic overhaul of the state’s congressional map ahead of the 2028 elections.
In two separate 7-0 opinions, the court ruled that all five proposed redistricting initiatives — including three backed by Democrat-aligned groups and two supported by Republicans — violated Colorado’s constitution and cannot move forward. The decisions effectively preserve the state’s independent redistricting commission and all but end hopes of changing Colorado’s congressional map before the 2028 election.
The ruling is particularly significant for Democrats, who had viewed Colorado as one of their best opportunities to gain House seats through mid-decade redistricting. Democrat-backed proposals would have temporarily suspended the state’s independent commission and replaced the current 4-4 congressional split with a map that heavily favored Democrats, potentially creating as many as seven Democratic-leaning districts.
Because supporters needed to qualify the measures for this November’s ballot in order to implement new maps before 2028, Monday’s ruling leaves virtually no path forward.
Chief Justice Monica M. Márquez wrote that dismantling Colorado’s independent commission would represent a fundamental change to the state’s election system.
“Undoing the state’s independent commission would be ‘a seismic shift to Colorado’s longstanding redistricting process enshrined in the state constitution,'” Márquez wrote.
“Changing long-settled law by modifying the timing, frequency, criteria, and entity responsible for congressional redistricting represents a significant change beyond the proponents’ stated central purposes,” she continued.
In a separate opinion, the court concluded the ballot measures also violated Colorado’s constitutional requirement that initiatives address only a single subject.
Justice Richard Gabriel wrote that allowing the proposals to proceed would have permitted supporters to “achieve indirectly what they could not achieve directly” and would amount to “an end run around the single subject requirement.”
Colorado voters approved independent congressional redistricting commissions through constitutional amendments in 2018, removing the map-drawing process from direct control by state lawmakers. Since then, the commission has been responsible for drawing the state’s congressional districts following each census.
The now-defeated Democrat-led effort was part of a broader national fight over congressional maps as both parties seek every possible advantage heading into future elections. Colorado had been identified by Democratic strategists as one of their top targets because of the possibility of reshaping multiple Republican-held districts.
According to POLITICO, Democrat-aligned groups had already spent more than $2 million on the Colorado campaign, with much of the money going toward signature gathering.
Republicans quickly celebrated the court’s decision.
“Complete and total victory in Colorado!” Adam Kincaid, president of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, wrote on X.
Democratic supporters expressed frustration with the ruling.
Curtis Hubbard, a spokesman for Coloradans for a Level Playing Field, called the decision “disappointing.”
“While Trump and his MAGA allies regularly sidestep the law and ignore voters, efforts to respond have once again been dealt a legal setback over a technicality,” Hubbard said in a statement.
With the court’s unanimous decision, Colorado’s current independent commission—and the congressional map it produced—will remain in place heading into the 2028 election cycle
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