Colorado Supreme Court Expands Who Can Sue Over Secret Government Meetings

By Michael Karlik | Colorado Politics

The Colorado Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that organizations are entitled to the same recovery of their costs as individuals when they successfully pursue a public entity’s violation of the state’s open meetings law.

The Colorado Open Meetings Law permits “any person” to challenge a violation of the law. At the same time, it grants “the citizen” who proves a violation the right to relief and to recover the cost of litigation for holding the government accountable. The question for the Supreme Court was whether an organization, such as a newspaper, is a citizen entitled to the benefits of the law.

By 6-1, the court answered yes.

“It would be absurd to allow corporations — who are recognized as persons in one part of the statutory scheme and by (the Court of Appeals) — to have standing to pursue COML claims but then deny them the ability to seek injunctions to prevent violations and compensation for their efforts to protect public rights,” wrote Justice Melissa Hart in the Oct. 7 opinion. “Nothing in the legislative history suggests that the legislature intended to draw any distinction.”

Chief Justice Monica M. Márquez dissented. She argued an individual citizen, such as a reporter, could logically benefit from the law even if their employer organization could not.

“After all, the purpose of the COML is to ensure that members of the public, i.e., the individual human citizens who make up the People of Colorado, are apprised of governmental decision-making,” she wrote.

Márquez indicated she also believes organizations cannot sue to enforce the open meetings law because they are not “persons,” but that issue was not before the court.

The case marks the sixth time Márquez has dissented since the Supreme Court began its 2025-2026 term last month. She has now dissented more often than she has been in the majority.

The dispute arose from the Aurora City Council’s brief pursuit of a censure against Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky. After Jurinsky called the city’s police chief “trash” on a radio talk show, then-Council Member Juan Marcano moved to censure her. On March 14, 2022, the council held a closed-door executive session to discuss the advertised topic of “legal advice.” Four days later, a reporter for The Sentinel asked for the recording of the discussion about Jurinsky’s censure, only to be denied.

The council held another meeting that included an item about the censure with a statement explaining that during the executive session, the council “directed and instructed special legal counsel to end the investigation” and to dismiss the charges against Jurinsky. 

The Sentinel filed suit, leading Arapahoe County District Court Judge Elizabeth B. Volz to review the documentation and learn the council had taken a roll call vote about how to proceed. Moreover, the description of the executive session “does not appear to comply with the requirements of the applicable statutes,” she wrote.

However, Volz gave the city the opportunity to argue that attorney-client privilege shielded the recording from disclosure. After reconsidering her decision, Volz decided the council’s subsequent description of what took place at the March 14 executive session cured the original violation. She ended the case on those grounds.

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