Foundation v. Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing

Citations

• 2020 COA 156

Syllabus

Plaintiffs are the TABOR Foundation, the Colorado Union of Taxpayers Foundation, and two of their members. Plaintiffs filed suit claiming that the Hospital Provider Fee (HPF) Program and the Healthcare Affordability and Sustainability Fee (HASF) Program, administered by the Colorado Healthcare Affordability and Sustainability Enterprise (CHASE), violate the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights (TABOR), Colo. Const. art. X, § 20, and are also otherwise unconstitutional. The HPF Program was terminated in 2017 when the General Assembly enacted HASF. Under both programs, hospitals are required to make payments to the state or a state-created enterprise. The federal government provides matching funds to the state or enterprise, which then distributes the combined funds to the hospitals. Plaintiffs argued that both programs violate TABOR because the money paid by the hospitals to the programs constitutes taxes that were not approved by the voters, CHASE is an unlawful enterprise under TABOR, the HASF program violated TABOR's excess state revenues cap, and CHASE and the HASF program are unconstitutional because their enabling statutes violated the Colorado Constitution's single-subject requirement. On cross-motions for summary judgment, the parties agreed that no trial was necessary and the court should decide the case on the facts presented. The court rejected defendants' argument that plaintiffs lacked standing and it addressed and rejected all of plaintiffs' substantive attacks on the statutes and programs. On appeal, plaintiffs argued that the member plaintiffs had taxpayer standing. This type of standing requires a clear nexus between the status as a taxpayer and the challenged government action to satisfy the injury-in-fact requirement. Here, the unrebutted evidence showed that the programs are funded solely by the hospitals and matching federal dollars. Thus, there is no nexus between the member plaintiffs' taxpayer dollars and the hospital programs. Because there is no nexus