22 hours Ago
It took a scandal — exposed by The Gazette’s investigative reporting — to alert the public several years ago to the need for reform in Colorado’s judiciary. As news coverage peeled back the layers of secrecy that have enshrouded the state’s courts, it became clear how little scrutiny Colorado’s judges face compared with officialdom in the other two branches of state government. Incidents of judicial misconduct and ensuing cover-ups came to light — serving to undermine public confidence in the one branch that is expected not only to uphold the law but to apply it.
Clearly, more transparency and accountability have been needed. The Legislature responded by enacting several reforms in 2023. It now is proposing to voters a constitutional amendment, Amendment H, on this fall’s statewide ballot, to enhance the autonomy and integrity of the process for reviewing judicial misconduct cases and disciplining judges.
Amendment H is a welcome and overdue reform. The Gazette’s editorial board urges a YES vote. Among other provisions, the proposed constitutional amendment establishes an independent judicial discipline adjudicative board — scrapping the current, ineffectual Commission on Judicial Discipline.
H also sets standards for judicial review of a discipline case, and clarifies when discipline proceedings become public. The upshot is to put teeth into the procedure for calling out judicial misconduct and subjecting it to public scrutiny. The scandal that got the ball rolling for reform involved malfeasance at the very highest level of the state’s judiciary — including former Colorado Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Coats, who was the state’s top judge from 2018 through 2020.
Coats had authorized a multimillion-dollar contract with a high-ranking Judicial Department employee who had faced dismissal but threatened a tell-all sex-discrimination lawsuit. The suit promised to reveal years of alleged judicial misconduct that went unpunished or was covered up. Whether the consulting contract, later rescinded, was awarded as a quid pro quo never was established.
But an independent inquiry conducted after the deal was made public found Coats’ lack of training as an administrator, his reliance on an untrustworthy subordinate and his poor judgment were partly to blame for the scandal. Last year, a special judges’ tribunal handed down an unprecedented public censure of Coats, who admitted to violating the Code of Judicial Conduct’s requirement that judges competently and diligently perform their administrative duties. The controversy wound up shedding light on a wide-ranging pattern of poor accountability at the Judicial Department — and of a deficient discipline process governing judges and court staffers.
Voters now have an opportunity to start setting things straight. Amendment H isn’t the only reform needed on the bench in our state. There are yet other facets of Colorado’s judicial system — most notably, the way judges are reviewed and retained in office, and the need for greater transparency in that process — that warrant a reassessment.
But H will help pry open the closed doors behind which the state’s judiciary long was able to conceal its improprieties from the public. In other words, it will remind those who sit in judgment — that they aren’t above the law. The Gazette Editorial Board.
