On September 1, the Colorado Supreme Court refused to hear Colorado Libertarian Party v Doty. This action by the Supreme Court is shameful. Colorado law permits qualified major parties to nominate people who have not been members of that party for an entire year. But Colorado law denies this right to qualified minor parties. There is no principle of law, and no principle of political philosophy or political science, that justifies such discrimination.

The lower state court had upheld the discriminatory treatment, based on a Colorado Supreme Court decision in 1991, but that case involved an unqualified political party, not a qualified party (even the 1991 precedent is unsupported by any philosophical or theoretical foundation).

This is the second court action recently (the first was from Pennsylvania) that says qualified minor parties are subject to ballot access burdens that qualified major parties are not subject to. Both lawsuits need to be placed before the U.S. Supreme Court. Once a state has recognized that a party has enough voter support to meet the state’s own definition of “party”, then all such parties should enjoy the same right of association.