Colorado Politics: The Denver-based federal appeals court concluded on Tuesday that Colorado lawmakers cannot be sued for creating and enforcing rules of decorum that circumscribe the public commentary allowed at legislative committee hearings.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit agreed that the concept of legislative immunity extends to the establishment and enforcement of decorum rules, and it does not matter whether lawmakers are sued individually or as arms of the state.

“The legislative process is inherently political, and therefore not easily amenable to federal judicial inquiry. People injured by this process are generally not free to sue legislators for their legislative acts,” wrote Judge Richard E.N. Federico in the panel’s March 10 opinion. “The entire purpose of adopting committee rules was to govern conduct at legislative hearings. That adoption would be meaningless if legislators, as the ones overseeing such hearings, could not enforce those rules in the very forum they were designed for.”

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