The Democrats who run the Colorado legislature were wrong to use speed-reading computers to combat the GOP’s attempt to delay liberal legislation, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled Monday.
In a 4-3 decision issued two years to the week since unintelligible speed-reading debuted on the state Senate floor, the high court said that the use of computer programs in that case was unconstitutional.
“There are unquestionably different ways by which the legislature may comply with the (bill) reading requirement,” the court stated. “But the cacophony generated by the computers here isn’t one of them.”
The ruling confirms a previous ruling at the district court level. It’s a win for Republicans, who sued Senate Democratic leadership.
A common stall tactic at the legislature is to request that a bill be read at length — as in every word, in order, out loud. Republicans were facing a deluge of big-ticket liberal bills in early 2019, including one that proposed to abolish the death penalty, and Assistant Minority Leader John Cooke, a Weld County Republican, asked that a 2,203-page bill be read at length.
