The Colorado Supreme Court on Monday blocked all attempts to redraw the state’s congressional districts for the 2028 election from reaching the ballot.
The court ruled that each of the proposed ballot measures “violated the constitutional single-subject requirement,” Colorado Politics reports.
The effort to redraw the state’s congressional map would have given Democrats three additional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
🚨 The Colorado Supreme Court unanimously blocked three ballot initiatives aimed at redrawing the state's congressional map, holding the proposals violated Colorado's constitutional single-subject requirement. pic.twitter.com/7JHiMXrxFj
— SCOTUS Wire (@scotus_wire) June 29, 2026
Colorado Politics explained further:
The court considered five distinct, but related, ballot measures. Half of the proposals would have redrawn U.S. House of Representatives districts to give Democrats an overwhelming advantage, while the other half would have alternatively given Republicans a slightly larger advantage over the status quo. There was also a separate measure to alter the redistricting commission that drew the current boundaries.
The Supreme Court held that changing the state’s process for redistricting and approving new maps, either together or through separate interlocking initiatives, violated the Colorado Constitution.
“To conclude otherwise and to allow initiative proponents to proceed with interlocking measures like those at issue here would allow proponents to achieve indirectly what they could not achieve directly and would endorse an end run around the single subject requirement. This we cannot do,” wrote Justice Richard L. Gabriel in the June 29 opinion pertaining to the three interlocking ballot measures.
According to The Colorado Sun, the initiatives were funded by a group linked to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).
Voters in Colorado added the state’s independent redistricting process to the state constitution in 2018.
Colorado Supreme Court: Redistricting plans for 2028 election cannot proceed under state constitution https://t.co/OGH2m1rcNS
— The Gazette (@csgazette) June 29, 2026
More from The Colorado Sun:
Had voters approved the ballot measures, they would have put new maps in place for the elections in 2028 and 2030, making Democrats favored to win seven of Colorado’s eight congressional seats, up from the four they hold today.
In two decisions on Monday, the state Supreme Court ruled that the proposal violated the “single subject” requirement in the state constitution, which requires that ballot initiatives have only one central purpose.
“Changing the constitutionally mandated frequency of redistricting — however temporary the change — is not merely a mechanism to administer the new congressional district map,” Chief Justice Monica Marquez wrote in the court’s unanimous decision blocking Initiative 240. “Instead, it represents a seismic shift to Colorado’s longstanding redistricting process enshrined in the state constitution.”
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