A federal judge has lowered the boom on a long-running lawsuit that had sought to use the courts to do what a succession of politicians wasn’t able to do in elected office — dismantle the voter-approved Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights amended into Colorado’s Constitution 25 years ago.In a 24-page ruling issued Thursday, U.S. District Judge Raymond P. Moore found that the cast of politicians and other officials, mostly Democratic, who had signed on as plaintiffs when the suit was filed six years ago never was able to demonstrate legal standing to sue.

The lead plaintiff is state Sen. Andy Kerr, a Lakewood Democrat, who now is running for Congress in Colorado’s 7th District in the Denver metro area. At one point, counsel for the plaintiffs included former Colorado Democratic U.S. Rep. David Skaggs, of Boulder.

All had argued that provisions of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR — authored by Colorado Springs political activist Douglas Bruce and added to the state’s constitution in 1992 — flouted the U.S. Constitution. The plaintiffs’ core legal argument was that by giving voters direct veto power over all tax hikes and spending increases that exceed constitutionally set spending limits, the landmark policy in effect does an end-run on representative democracy. It was a novel legal strategy.

Yet for all their years of trying to make that case, through repeated court appeals, plaintiffs never even got as far as proving they had the right to bring the unconventional lawsuit in the first place. Moore ruled they never met the minimum burden required to have their day in court on the merits of their legal claim, having failed to make the case under either of two potential legal arguments:

“…plaintiffs make no effort to discuss, analyze, or even ruminate on how the elected officials, educators, and citizens have standing under either strand. Simply asserting that all plaintiffs have suffered concrete TABOR-related injuries, falls far short of satisfying either strand. And the Court should not step in to perform the analysis for plaintiffs. The analysis for both strands is nuanced and cannot take place in an argument vacuum, not least because it is far from certain whether the individual plaintiffs could satisfy either strand.”

Pending a decision by plaintiffs to appeal yet again, the ruling may well draw the saga to a close. Some observers and critics, particularly in TABOR-friendlier Republican ranks, certainly hoped so. As reported via Denver’s Channel 7 news:

Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman praised Judge Moore’s decision.

“After 6 years of litigation, the federal court … entered an order that should put an end to this protracted and unproductive litigation. The district court’s order recognizes that this suit is an improper attempt to debate a public policy question through a federal lawsuit,” Coffman said.

“We hope the plaintiffs in this case will not appeal, given that my office has won victories in the Supreme Court, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, and now the federal district court. The parties can certainly continue to oppose TABOR as a matter of policy and politics, but it’s long past time they gave up their frivolous lawsuit.”

State Senate President Kevin Grantham, R-Cañon City, released a statement on the ruling:

“Senate Republicans applaud the district court’s decision to dismiss this case, which clearly was aimed at end-running and undermining, through sly legal maneuvers, the will of voters who wrote TABOR into the State Constitution. If TABOR foes are sure Coloradans no longer support the taxpayer protections and fiscal discipline TABOR provides, they should stop waging these guerilla wars and put a repeal measure on the ballot. They don’t do so because they know Coloradans continue to support the spirit and letter of this law.”

According to Channel 7 News, a spokeswoman for the plaintiffs said they would meet next week to decide next steps.