Democrats' Colorado Redistricting Hopes Killed In Court

Democrats just suffered a major setback in their plans to counter Republican redistricting gains before the 2028 elections.

The Colorado Supreme Court ruled Monday that all five proposed redistricting ballot measures in the state — three led by Democrats and two led by Republicans — violated the state’s constitution, preventing either party from implementing new maps by undoing the independent commission that currently controls the process.

Colorado’s eight House seats are currently split evenly between both parties, and one of Democrats’ most ambitious redraw efforts would have created a map where seven of the districts favor the party.

Because Democrats would have needed a measure on the ballot this fall in order to redraw for 2028, the timing of the ruling makes it all but impossible to redraw.

The court issued two opinions on the redistricting measures Monday, and both were unanimous decisions against proposed remapping efforts.

That scuttles Democrats’ hopes to pick up as many as three House seats as part of the running nationwide gerrymandering battle. It’s also the latest court setback for Democrats after their gerrymander in Virginia faced a similar fate and the U.S. Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act, allowing the GOP to dismantle minority-majority districts across the South.

Undoing the state's independent commission would be “a seismic shift to Colorado’s longstanding redistricting process enshrined in the state constitution,” Chief Justice Monica M. Márquez wrote Monday in one of the court’s 7-0 opinions.

“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,” Márquez continued.

In the other case, the court determined that the ballot measures violated a provision of the state constitution that requires them to focus on a single subject.

Democrats had been bullish that Colorado would be one of their best chances to pick up seats through redistricting in 2028, and it was one of the states outlined by both Democrats’ top redistricting group and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries following other redistricting losses this year.

President Donald Trump and Republicans have pushed for redraws in as many states as possible, a ploy that has net the GOP as many as 10 House seats in this year’s midterms — and forced Democrats to scramble in response.

Democratic-aligned groups had already poured more than $2 million into the Colorado ballot measures, mostly on signature gathering efforts so they could appear on November’s ballot.

Republicans immediately hailed the rulings.

“Complete and total victory in Colorado!” Adam Kincaid, president of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, said on X.

Curtis Hubbard, spokesperson for Coloradans for a Level Playing Field — a Democratic-aligned group behind one of the measures — called the ruling “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,” he said in a statement.