By. Senator Tom J. Wiens
The citizens of Colorado are rightfully concerned about the cost of illegal immigration to our taxpayers. As a result, for the last several months a group of dedicated Coloradans have worked tirelessly to get Initiative 55 placed on the November ballot.
Initiative 55 is a simple, straight forward initiative that plainly states: "Except as mandated by federal law, the provisions of non-emergency services by the state of Colorado, or any county, city, or other political subdivision thereof, is restricted to citizens of and aliens lawfully present in the United States of America." Imagine, taxpayers wanting to have a say in who gets their hard earned tax dollars!
On June 12th, the Colorado Supreme Court issued an opinion that, if not reversed on appeal, will keep the taxpayer's voice from being heard by taking
Initiative 55 off the ballot. The Court's opinion is one of the most convoluted pieces of political rationalization in Colorado history. The audacity of our Colorado Supreme Court to take away the people's right to vote on such an important issue.
This Court acts more like a political or legislative body than a judicial body. Judges should not be surprised when the cry for term limits on judges begins to rise among the people of Colorado.
When our Supreme Court Justices stretch and bend all legal precedent to perpetrate such obvious, politically motivated judicial activism, do they actually think the public won't see through it? Or maybe, because they are not subject to any accountability, they just don't care if their decisions are based on any justifiable legal authority.
This is such a glaring and egregious example of fabricating legal rhetoric to justify a pre-conceived outcome. In this case, they simply don't want the people of Colorado to vote on the illegal immigration issue put forth in Initiative 55. The simple subject of this initiative is only one clear sentence long. It appears the Democrat justices that compose the majority of our State Supreme Court oppose the initiative and fear the people of Colorado might not agree with them. So, they blatantly devised an opinion intended to stop the voting from even taking place.
The ramifications of this outrageous decision are far more onerous than the unfortunate demise of Initiative 55. If left to stand, it will virtually end the initiative process in Colorado. The decision basically says that if there is more than one "identifiable impact or effect" of an initiated proposal (as stated in the dissenting opinion of Judges Coats and Rice), it fails to fit under the "one subject" rule. Or just as ridiculous, if the proponents for an initiative ever state that they had more than one reason for drafting an initiative, as divined by searching their Web sites and literature, then, according to our Supreme Court, this too is enough to eliminate a ballot measure under the "one subject" rule. If this were uniformly applied to other ballot issues, Referendum C and D could not have even come up for a vote! Have we forgotten how many different arguments were made for the impacts of those ballot issues?
I have not been a particular fan of judicial term limits in the past, but this behavior leaves us very little else to consider. The judiciary was set up to be "independent," not "unaccountable." Lifetime tenure is no more appropriate for the Colorado Supreme Court than it is for the governor or legislature. When this type of judicial activism reaches the point where our courts are actually trampling on the rights of the people rather than protecting those rights as is their sworn duty, we have to consider a plan of attack. I don't use those words lightly. I seriously doubt that the people of Colorado will allow our entire initiative process, as set forth in our Constitution, to be struck down by Supreme Court justices who have lost their respect for the rights and the voice of the people!
The people's voice is about to be heard!