Recent elections have produced one surprising court decision after another on Colorado’s important law banning government officials from using public resources to advocate for or against candidates or ballot measures.
This year’s head-scratcher is from Fort Collins, where an administrative law judge ruled that Liberty Common School made an illegal contribution with a Facebook post of a news report on a school-board candidate in a nearby district.
The “Liberty Common High School parent Mrs. Tomi Grundvig announces she’s running for a seat on the Thompson School District Board of Education.”
So how could this neutral description amount to an illegal gift? The judge said because some people who read the post shared it along with their own positive comments about Grundvig, while others “liked” the link.
Judge Matthew E. Norwood means well, and we frankly wish other judges had half of his punctilious attitude toward the ban on official electioneering. But the idea that a neutral, one-sentence post on social media about a candidate with a son in the school is a violation of the law is a stretch.
Principal Bob Schaffer, a former Republican congressman, linked to the same article on his personal Facebook page with praise for Grundvig. Had he done this on the school’s Facebook page, he would have crossed the line. But he has a right to express his opinion on a private medium, and the judge didn’t indicate otherwise.
What makes the ruling especially surprising are two decisions in recent years in which much more obvious attempts by districts to influence elections were waved past by the courts.
Earlier this year, to commission a study that praised its reforms and the performance of the board and then e-mail it to parents a few weeks before an election. And last year a Denver judge gave a green light to in a district e-mail to parents.
Such blatant violations of the law should have been smacked down by the courts. But the equivalent of a community notice? That’s overkill.
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