A federal judge on Tuesday threw out a voting rights challenge to Colorado Springs’ municipal election schedule, brought by four civic groups seeking to force the city to move its April elections to November to reduce turnout disparities among voters of color.

The parties submitted hundreds of pages of evidence disputing whether April elections in odd-numbered years should be considered a discriminatory practice under the Voting Rights Act. The plaintiffs argued participation from Black and Hispanic voters was only on par with White residents in November elections in even-numbered years, while the city maintained the lawsuit sought to establish a “national election day” for municipalities that federal law does not require.

Ultimately, U.S. District Court Judge S. Kato Crews did not analyze any of those arguments. In a July 9 order, he concluded the organizations suing the city had no basis to bring their claim — going so far as to suggest the plaintiffs attempted to manufacture standing solely for the lawsuit.

“The City has held its municipal elections in April as early as 1873. The Plaintiff organizations were founded multiple decades (and sometimes over 100 years) later, meaning the City conducted April elections for numerous years before these organizations existed, and it has continued to hold April elections well after,” Crews wrote. “This chronology demonstrates the abstract nature of Plaintiffs’ claimed injuries, which seem to be supported only by their decision to now oppose the timing of the April elections in federal court, and to do so without any voters as plaintiffs and without suing on behalf of their individual members.”

Crews, an appointee of President Joe Biden, largely relied on a less-than-one-month-old U.S. Supreme Court decision, Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. In that case, a group of medical associations opposed to abortion challenged the government’s longstanding approval of the medication abortion drug mifepristone, even though they did not prescribe or dispense the drug themselves. 

The Supreme Court unanimously found the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue.

Daniel Hessel, an attorney with Harvard Law School’s Election Law Clinic who represented the plaintiffs challenging Colorado Springs’ election schedule, said he was disappointed by Crews’ decision to apply fresh Supreme Court precedent without input from the parties.

“We would have readily briefed that issue had the court invited us to do so. Our clients are weighing options to ensure that Colorado Springs ends its discriminatory and outlier practice,” Hessel said.

A spokesperson for Colorado Springs said the city was pleased with the decision to dismiss the lawsuit.

Around the beginning of 2022, Harvard’s Election Law Clinic contacted the plaintiffs about suing the city. The groups that joined the lawsuit — Citizens Project, Colorado Latinos Vote, the League of Women Voters of the Pikes Peak Region and the Black/Latino Leadership Coalition — alleged they suffered an injury from the city’s practice of holding April elections.

Specifically, their voter education and get-out-the-vote activities required “additional effort” and diversion of resources in April of odd-numbered years that could be avoided if the city aligned its own election with the state’s November election.

The plaintiffs cited statistics showing Black and Hispanic participation in the city’s April elections was roughly half that of White voters, but the gap substantially narrowed during November elections. The lawsuit sought to require Colorado Springs to move its elections to November because of the allegedly discriminatory effect of April elections on voters of color.

“Plaintiffs do not contend that minority voters face scheduling hurdles in spring elections that white voters do not confront,” the city’s lawyers responded. “Plaintiffs instead contend that there is only one right election date — specifically, the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November — and every other day is wrong.”

Colorado Springs also submitted a declaration from Mayor Yemi Mobolade, who is Black, stating his opposition to the lawsuit. He added the plaintiffs had not, to his knowledge, sought to alter the election schedule legislatively and he was “unaware of any grassroots effort in the Black and Hispanic communities to change the timing of Colorado Springs elections.”

Crews, in his order, noted the civic groups were suing based on alleged negative effects to their own voter education activities stemming from April elections. But he noted the Supreme Court’s recent decision in the mifepristone case rejected the idea that merely spending resources always amounts to an injury.

An organization “cannot spend its way into standing simply by expending money to gather information and advocate against the defendant’s action. An organization cannot manufacture its own standing in that way,” wrote Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.

Crews blasted the plaintiffs for making a “reckless and untrue” assertion that he would be the first judge anywhere to find voting rights organizations lack standing to sue. Instead, he agreed the plaintiffs, like those in the mifepristone case, had not shown a specific injury from the city’s 151-year-old practice.

“Plaintiffs have already been using their respective resources on voter education programs and initiatives to educate Black, Hispanic, and other voters,” Crews wrote.

The case is Citizens Project et al. v. City of Colorado Springs et al.