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Suthers defends health care lawsuitBy Peter Jones Published: 06.06.10 Colorado Attorney General John Suthers told members of the South Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce that a controversial lawsuit challenging part of federal health care reform was brought forth to ensure their constitutional rights. “What I’m trying to do is protect the individual citizens of Colorado from pervasive coercion by the federal government because what they’ve set up is constitutionally infirm,” the Republican told about 30 chamber business leaders at a June 1 candidate forum in Centennial. Colorado is one of 20 states challenging a federal provision that would eventually require...

FEDERAL HEALTH CARE PLAN REMARKS March 22, 2010 It is not part of my job as the Attorney General of Colorado to weigh in on whether the Patient Protection and Affordability Health Care Act passed by Congress yesterday is good public policy. It is however, part of my job to defend the rights of the State of Colorado and its citizens from the exercise of federal power in violation of the United States Constitution. The U. S. Constitution gives the federal government only enumerated powers. All other powers are expressly left to the states and their people. One such enumerated...

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers this morning said he will vote no on three of four state supreme court justices who are up for retention in November's elections and yes on Justice Nancy Rice. Suthers will vote against retaining Chief Judge Mary Mullarkey and judges Alex Martinez and Michael Bender... Most Republicans are supporting the effort to deny retention of all four justices who are up for retention. Mullarkey is widely despised by Colorado's Republicans because she and the other four justices are so blatantly partisan in deciding politically controversial cases. If Mullarkey is retained as chief justice this year,...

Attorney General John Suthers said Friday that a plan by Colorado lawmakers to tap a workers' compensation fund for $500 million to balance the state budget is unconstitutional and impossible to defend in court. "Pinnacol's funds are not assets of the state and Pinnacol's policyholders have vested rights in any surplus funds," wrote Solicitor General Dan Domenico in a legal analysis that Suthers, a Republican, asked him to prepare. Seizing the money "would violate the Colorado Constitution." Domenico also wrote that he could not "envision how our office would make a good-faith defense of such an action," and even if...

Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter's executive order granting conditional collective bargaining rights to state employees has produced at least one unintended major benefit: It has belatedly focused public attention on a confusing set of laws and court decisions that govern the rights of public employees to organize and bargain collectively. Ritter's order, of course, does nothing to improve the landscape — and if allowed to stand, will further muddle the issue. Thanks to a narrow 1992 Colorado Supreme Court decision, it is already quite tangled. The court in that year held that government employees had a qualified right to strike, a...