It’s Not Impossible to Redistrict Colorado

Posted August 14, 2025

When Colorado voters in 2018 adopted an independent commission to draw congressional maps, the commission was designed to reduce the partisanship that had previously dogged map-drawing responsibility when it rested with the state Legislature.

It was also a time when Americans had at least some confidence that leaders throughout the country shared fundamental values that, despite policy differences, ensured political regularity.

Things are different now.

Trumpist Republicans have adopted a form of extreme partisanship that rejects political opponents as illegitimate, and they treat voter preferences as irrelevant. They are openly hostile to the fundamental values that have undergirded the American project since its founding, and they have already trashed so many of the laws, norms and institutions that constituted the republic.

The complete rejection of democratic norms and pursuit of win-at-all-costs politics by Republicans leave opponents with a stark choice — counterstrike or perish.

So as President Donald Trump and Republican leaders around the country brazenly prepare to redistrict states such as Texas to favor congressional Republicans, many Democrats say they have little choice but to counter this attack on democracy by redistricting states they lead. Majority control of the U.S. House is at stake.

The kind of gerrymandering Republicans are attempting violates the core democratic principle that voters should choose their leaders, not the other way around. That’s what the independent commission is all about. Many Democrats, like those in Colorado, have taken steps to reduce map-drawing practices that prioritize one political party.

But if they let Republican-led states gerrymander with abandon and fail to respond, the partisan balance in the U.S. House will have no relation to the will of the voters.

Virtually every discussion on the matter so far concludes that mid-decade redistricting can’t be done in Colorado, even though both chambers of the state Legislature are dominated by Democrats and the governor is a Democrat. But crucial points omitted from the analysis so far suggest an opening for redistricting in the state.

A Colorado Supreme Court ruling from 2003 is commonly cited as the main reason Colorado can’t undertake redistricting mid-decade.

The Legislature failed to draw congressional maps after the 2000 census, and a state district court was forced to draw one for the 2002 elections. In 2003, Republicans took over majority control of both chambers of the General Assembly, and they drew new maps. Ken Salazar, then the Democratic attorney general, sued, and the Colorado Supreme Court threw out the Republican maps.

The majority on the court said the state constitution requires redistricting after the census and restricts the Legislature from redistricting at any other time. But a provision the justices relied on to make that ruling is the very one transformed by the 2018 amendment creating an independent redistricting commission. That amendment might have weakened the durability of the Colorado Supreme Court’s earlier ruling.

Several U.S. Supreme Court justices at the time had their own doubts. The Colorado General Assembly had asked the high court to review the Colorado Supreme Court ruling, and though the majority of justices declined to do so, members of the high court’s conservative wing, including Justice Clarence Thomas, dissented, saying the provision at issue in the state constitution might conflict with the U.S. Constitution.

Another important point is that the state constitution does not explicitly bar mid-decade redistricting or redistricting by an authority other than the independent commission.

In California, which also redistricts through an independent commission created by a state constitutional amendment, Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democratic leaders are pursuing mid-decade redistricting in response to Texas’ plan to redistrict to favor Republicans. The specifics of California law are different from Colorado’s, but the thrust of an influential analysis from the UCLA Voting Rights Project on the redistricting plan might offer guidance to Colorado Democrats.

The analysis distinguishes between the independent commission’s “responsibility” to redistrict and the legislature’s “power” to redistrict. The legislature could exercise that power, derived from the U.S. Constitution, “today,” according to the authors.

It would normally dishonor the democratic traditions of Colorado to even engage in a conversation about partisan-motivated mid-decade redistricting. But the complete rejection of democratic norms and pursuit of win-at-all-costs politics by Republicans leave opponents with a stark choice — counterstrike or perish.

In a sign of the scale of the threat posed by the Trumpist right, even Kent Thiry, one of the main backers of Colorado’s independent commission, said he understands why Democrats would redistrict.

“I am opposed to the cancer of gerrymandering, but I respect those who don’t want to bring a knife to a gunfight,” he said in a post on social media.

The redistricting conversation in Colorado — represented in Congress by four Republicans and four Democrats, even though Democrats hold every statewide office and have strong majorities in the state House and Senate — commenced when a former Democratic member of Congress, Yadira Caraveo, who is running to reclaim her seat in the 8th Congressional District, called for the state to scrap its independent commission and redistrict.

“For the sake of the country, Democrats need to fight back,” she wrote in a press release.

The stakes are so high that the Legislature might decide to redistrict and prepare to withstand the inevitable lawsuits. Or redistricting proponents could put new maps to voters, as the California Legislature is planning to do in a special election.

And there’s the less irregular method of putting on the 2026 ballot a constitutional amendment that at least would repeal the independent commission and allow for redistricting before the 2028 election — though Trump’s consolidation of authoritarian power by then could be entrenched beyond resistance.

The bad-faith scheme from Republicans to guarantee themselves a U.S. House majority is an affront to democracy and an existential challenge to opponents. Leaders in other states — such as Kansas and Minnesota, in addition to California — refuse to be steamrolled. Newsom in California put it this way: “If we don’t put a stake into the heart of this administration, there may not be an election in 2028 … They’re not screwing around. We can’t afford to screw around either. We have got to fight fire with fire.”

Quentin Young is the editor of Colorado Newsline. This commentary is republished from Colorado Newsline under a Creative Commons license. Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.