Colorado Politics: Colorado’s second-highest court clarified last month that ejecting a disruptive observer from the livestream of a criminal trial will not typically violate the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a public trial.

A three-judge panel for the Court of Appeals considered for the first time whether a Weld County judge effectively “closed” his courtroom mid-trial by banning one attendee from the livestream whose repeated failure to mute themselves was causing a distraction. The panel’s majority agreed that as long as the physical courtroom was still open, restricting the observer’s virtual attendance was permissible.

“Absent extraordinary circumstances not present here, if a courtroom remains open,” wrote Judge Timothy J. Schutz in the Dec. 28 opinion, “the partial cessation of virtual proceedings does not amount to a closure of the courtroom for purposes of the constitutional right to a public trial.”

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