Colorado’s second-highest court agreed last week that the state’s current method of adjudicating campaign finance complaints is constitutional and is not the “very definition of tyranny.”

For several years, state law has allowed any person to file a complaint alleging a campaign finance violation, which the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office then screens, decides whether to dismiss or investigate, and potentially imposes a penalty. Legislators enacted the process after a federal judge decided in 2018 that the prior system unconstitutionally “outsourced” enforcement to individual, inexperienced complainants.

Campaign Integrity Watchdog, an entity that regularly brings campaign finance complaints, argued to the Court of Appeals that the process enacted in the wake of the federal decision consolidated legislative, executive and judicial functions within “a single, partisan elected office.” Therefore, it was the “very definition of tyranny.”

A three-judge appellate panel disagreed.

“When, as here, the final agency decision is subject to judicial review, agency adjudicative procedures do not violate separation of powers principles,” wrote Judge Daniel M. Taubman in the Feb. 20 opinion. “We are, in fact, reviewing the Secretary’s dismissal of Watchdog’s complaint in this very case.”

In the underlying case, Campaign Integrity Watchdog first brought a complaint in 2014 against the Alliance for a Safe and Independent Woodmen Hills, which spent money in a special district election in El Paso County. An administrative law judge fined the Alliance, but the penalty remains unpaid. 

Campaign Integrity Watchdog brought a series of other complaints against the Alliance, the latest of which was filed in 2022. The deputy secretary of state dismissed the complaint and Campaign Integrity Watchdog sought judicial review.

In addressing the argument that the post-2018 system of campaign finance enforcement unconstitutionally gave the secretary of state’s office unilateral decision-making power, Denver District Court Judge Kandace C. Gerdes disagreed.

“Under the statute, a party still retains the right of judicial review of an adverse ruling by the SOS,” she wrote.

Campaign Integrity Watchdog once again appealed, suggesting the 2018 federal court decision was wrong and the secretary of state should have appealed it at the time.

Taubman, in the Court of Appeals’ decision, noted the federal order was not binding on the state appellate court. Nevertheless, the secretary of state had to abide by that decision as well as the legislature’s new framework for screening and adjudicating campaign finance complaints.

He added that the Court of Appeals had heard similar challenges to the way the executive branch of government adjudicates worker compensation claims. But the Court of Appeals has deemed that system constitutional, and Taubman wrote that the reasoning applied to campaign finance adjudications, too.

The appellate panel did, however, believe the secretary of state’s office wrongly dismissed the portion of Campaign Integrity Watchdog’s complaint that alleged the Alliance had neglected to file required campaign finance reports in 2022. Taubman wrote that the Alliance’s reporting obligations did not appear to have terminated even if its campaign activity had long ceased. Therefore, the secretary of state’s office should determine what penalties, if any, to impose.

The case is Campaign Integrity Watchdog v. Colorado Secretary of State.