3.1 Precedents Cited
Foundational federal “major purpose” origins
The court rooted Colorado’s constitutional text in the U.S. Supreme Court’s “major purpose” jurisprudence:
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Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976): The U.S. Supreme Court limited FECA’s “political committee” concept to groups
“under the control of a candidate or the major purpose of which is the nomination or election of a candidate.”
Colorado used this to infer that “major purpose” is inherently functional and fact-dependent, rather than a purely
formal label or a mechanical threshold.
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Federal Election Commission v. Massachusetts Citizens for Life, Inc., 479 U.S. 238 (1986) (“MCFL”): The Court emphasized MCFL’s
formation, funding model, activities, publications, and campaign spending to conclude it was not a political committee—while cautioning that
sufficiently extensive campaign activity could change that conclusion. The Colorado Supreme Court treated MCFL as a template for a
contextual inquiry, not a one-size-fits-all metric.
Colorado’s path to Amendment 27 and early interpretive decisions
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Common Sense Alliance v. Davidson, 995 P.2d 748 (Colo. 2000): Before Amendment 27, Colorado’s statutory definition of “issue committee”
lacked “major purpose” language. The court in Common Sense Alliance refused to import Buckley/MCFL’s major-purpose limitation into the statute,
acknowledging a “loophole” but adhering to text. In Unite for Colo., this history mattered because the voters later adopted Amendment 27
against that backdrop; the court presumed voters knew the law and intentionally chose to add “major purpose” to close or narrow the earlier regime’s
definitional overbreadth while still enabling disclosure.
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Independence Institute v. Coffman, 209 P.3d 1130 (Colo.App. 2008): This division rejected vagueness and overbreadth challenges and
explained that “major purpose” requires a fact-specific assessment informed by an organization’s charter/bylaws, activities/expenditures,
and the scope of issues in publications. The Supreme Court drew on this as an early Colorado articulation of a multi-factor approach.
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Cerbo v. Protect Colorado Jobs, Inc., 240 P.3d 495 (Colo.App. 2010): Cerbo defined “a major purpose” to mean spending a
“considerable or principal portion” of overall activities on ballot advocacy. The Supreme Court adopted this understanding as consistent with ordinary
dictionary meanings and with the “a” article signaling an organization may have multiple major purposes.
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Colorado Ethics Watch v. Gessler, 2013 COA 172M, 363 P.3d 727: A division struck down the Secretary of State’s 30% expenditure rule
as arbitrary and capricious because it was untethered from the statutory “pattern of conduct” language. The Supreme Court leveraged this to reinforce
its skepticism toward bright-line percentage tests and to favor flexible, evidence-based adjudication.
Interpretation canons and “any means all”
The court relied on Colorado and U.S. cases treating “any” as expansive:
- Filmore v. Wells, 15 P. 343 (Colo. 1887) and Winslow v. Morgan Cnty. Comm'rs, 697 P.2d 1141 (Colo.App. 1985)
- Stamp v. Vail Corp., 172 P.3d 437 (Colo. 2007)
- BP Am. Prod. Co. v. Colo. Dep't of Revenue, 2016 CO 23, 369 P.3d 281
- Babb v. Wilkie, 589 U.S. 399 (2020)
These authorities supported reading “any ballot issue or ballot question” as permitting aggregation across all measures an organization supports or
opposes in the relevant period.
Disclosure “informational interest” cases
Though the court did not decide Unite’s First Amendment challenges (certiorari was denied on those issues), it used U.S. Supreme Court disclosure
jurisprudence to explain why voters would endorse robust disclosure mechanisms:
- First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765 (1978)
- Buckley v. American Constitutional Law Foundation, Inc., 525 U.S. 182 (1999)
- Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010)
- United States v. Harriss, 347 U.S. 612 (1954) and Nat'l Ass'n of Mfrs. v. Taylor, 582 F.3d 1 (D.C. Cir. 2009)
Colorado constitutional interpretation and deference principles
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Markwell v. Cooke, 2021 CO 17: interpret to effectuate voter intent and prevent evasion.
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People v. Smith, 2023 CO 40 and Parrish v. Lamm, 758 P.2d 1356 (Colo. 1988): ordinary meaning and technical meaning via judicial construction.
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Colo. Ethics Watch v. Senate Maj. Fund, LLC, 2012 CO 12: use legal terms’ acquired meanings (e.g., “express advocacy”) when interpreting article XXVIII.
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Gessler v. Colo. Common Cause, 2014 CO 44 and Van Sickle v. Boyes, 797 P.2d 1267 (Colo. 1990): de novo constitutional interpretation; agency deference yields when contrary to law.
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Dwyer v. State, 2015 CO 58: voters presumed to know existing law.
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Colo. Common Cause v. Bledsoe, 810 P.2d 201 (Colo. 1991) and Inst. for the Edu. of the Mute &Blind v. Henderson, 31 P. 714 (Colo. 1892): interpret to prevent evasion.
3.2 Legal Reasoning
(A) “A major purpose” is not a numeric threshold; it is a holistic inquiry
The court began with ordinary meanings—“major” as “considerable, principal” and “purpose” as an objective or end—then emphasized that those words
alone do not prescribe a single method of proof. To determine how voters understood the phrase in 2002, the court treated Amendment 27 as an adoption
of the Buckley/MCFL “major purpose” concept and its case-by-case methodology. It reinforced that reading with:
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Amendment 27’s policy declaration favoring “full and timely disclosure” and “strong enforcement.”
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The 2002 Blue Book’s emphasis on disclosure so voters can evaluate “who is spending money to influence elections.”
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The “informational interest” rationale in federal constitutional doctrine, particularly salient in ballot-issue elections where voters act in a
quasi-legislative capacity.
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An anti-evasion principle: campaign-finance regulation invites strategic structuring; rigid rules can be gamed.
The court then expressly adopted the court of appeals’ seven-factor set as nonexclusive guidelines—important because it turns what had
been a patchwork of statutory cues and appellate decisions into a supreme-court-endorsed statewide framework:
- Objectives in organizational documents or public statements
- Activities and annual expenditures relative to ballot-measure activities/expenditures
- Scope of issues in publications relative to ballot-measure communications
- Length of existence relative to ballot-measure advocacy
- Organizational structure
- Interrelatedness with proponents/opponents
- Other issues with which the organization has been involved
Critically, the court cautioned that no factor is dispositive and not all factors will be usable in every record—an instruction aimed at preventing
tribunals from treating the list as a checklist rather than an evidentiary lens.
(B) “Any ballot issue or ballot question” permits aggregation across measures
The court’s aggregation holding rests primarily on textualism: “any” is expansive and commonly interpreted to mean “all.” The informational interest
rationale further supports aggregation—voters have at least as much need to know who is seeking to influence multiple ballot measures in a single cycle.
The court also used an “absurd results” argument: a group spending 100% of its resources on ballot advocacy could evade issue-committee status simply by
splitting spending evenly across many measures, if a proposition-by-proposition test were required.
(C) Application to Unite: spending share as a decisive counterweight
On the merits, the court highlighted four factors for which the record contained sufficient evidence:
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Objectives: Unite called itself an “issue advocacy organization,” but also disclaimed being (or intending to be) an issue committee.
The court treated this mixed messaging as neutral.
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Timing: Unite engaged in ballot work within three months of formation—supporting a major purpose inference.
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Expenditures: Unite spent about $4.0 million on ballot measures, but only 23.4% of total spending. The court held that
“less than a quarter” is not “considerable or principal” and therefore weighs strongly against major purpose.
This directly rejects the court of appeals’ willingness to treat low-percentage spending as supportive of major purpose.
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Interrelatedness/coordination: Unite’s in-kind services (printing petitions, gathering signatures) and connections to other actors
showed coordination that supports major purpose, because services imply deeper operational integration than a check alone.
The court emphasized that the case was close and that slightly different facts could change the result—particularly given evidence of interrelatedness—
but concluded the spending share, in context, “counterbalances” the pro-major-purpose evidence.
(D) What the court did not decide
The court explicitly declined to reach Unite’s First Amendment challenges because certiorari was granted only on the major-purpose interpretation.
As a result, Unite for Colo. is primarily a state constitutional interpretation case establishing a governing test and its application
to a specific factual record, not a definitive ruling on the constitutional limits of disclosure in Colorado.
3.3 Impact
1) A statewide, supreme-court-endorsed “major purpose” framework
By adopting a seven-factor, nonexclusive framework, the court standardizes how agencies, ALJs, and reviewing courts should evaluate “major purpose.”
This reduces reliance on ad hoc intuition and discourages bright-line shortcuts like the invalidated 30% rule in Colorado Ethics Watch v. Gessler.
2) Aggregation is now settled law under article XXVIII
The aggregation holding is likely to be the most consequential doctrinal change for enforcement: organizations cannot avoid issue-committee status by
distributing ballot-issue advocacy across multiple measures. Enforcement agencies can evaluate the organization’s ballot-issue advocacy as a unified program
for the cycle at issue.
3) Spending percentage remains central—without becoming a rigid threshold
The court refused to create a numeric test, yet its application signals that relative spending share is often the most probative evidence of whether
ballot advocacy is “considerable or principal.” The opinion’s explicit statement that “less than a quarter” weighs “strongly against” major purpose will be cited
repeatedly by organizations resisting issue-committee classification when their ballot spending is a minority slice of total outlays.
At the same time, the court cautioned that interrelatedness and other factors can matter enough that similar spending might yield a different outcome.
Practically, this encourages litigants to build records on structure, coordination, publications, and longevity—not just accounting.
4) Likely effects on future disputes and compliance behavior
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For regulators: Expect more record-building demands (organizational documents, public statements, communications, operational ties),
and more contested hearings, because the inquiry is fact-intensive by design.
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For advocacy organizations: Expect greater attention to governance, messaging, and internal separations between general issue advocacy
and ballot-measure operations. Entities may restructure to reduce “interrelatedness” indicators (especially service-based coordination).
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For transparency advocates: Aggregation advances disclosure goals, but the court’s willingness to find “no major purpose” at 23.4%
may narrow the set of organizations that qualify, depending on future applications and records.
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For litigation: “Close call” cases will likely turn on (i) the denominator problem (what counts as “total spending”), (ii) the classification
of expenditures as “ballot issue advocacy,” and (iii) evidence of coordination and functional integration with ballot committees.