GUEST COLUMN: An unaccountable judge vs. a career college
There has been a lot in the news of late concerning accountability of judges and the problems with a judiciary that lacks transparency. We are also seeing a lot of discussion over the role of educational alternatives, amplified by the controversy surrounding prolonged public-school closures ostensibly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but one that has long also involved private higher education solutions. A recent episode has welded both of these issues together.
For years now, the state has pursued a long-standing vendetta against private career colleges, culminating in a legal challenge being filed against one, CollegeAmerica, several years ago. The judge who heard that case came down with his ruling against the school — three years after hearing final arguments.
You read that right. It inexplicably took this judge three years to render a decision on a case he heard, three years during which time the owners, staff and students of College America were left with no way of knowing what their future might hold.
As you might expect, the defendants in the case, after waiting and anguishing for as long as they could without a peep from the judge in a case that had existential consequences for them, finally felt compelled to file a complaint with the judicial system. The judge in the case finally released his decision, in the wee hours of the morning on the very day the complaint against him was to be heard by the judicial review board. It strains credulity to believe that the timing was a mere coincidence.
To add injury to insult, the decision that was handed down went entirely against CollegeAmerica, the party that filed the complaint against the judge for taking so long to rule. It again is rather difficult to believe that there was no connection between the two events.
Concerning the complaint filed by CollegeAmerica, the review board agreed that three years was an unjustifiably long amount of time for a judge to take to do his job. But, as we’ve seen in multiple media reports stemming from other judicial controversies, whatever punishment or reprimand the judge received will never be known, as such disciplinary actions against judges are sealed to the public.
This story brings together two important issues in the state. The first is judicial accountability.
This has been an ongoing issue for some time; back when I was in the House Judiciary Committee, I supported efforts to bring transparency to the judiciary, including the inscrutable Public Defenders Office.
The judicial system is the third branch of our government, designed specifically by our founders to be equal to the legislative and executive branches.
If that is the case, why, then, are judges held to such a different standard from other public officials? If in either of the other branches of government, official misconduct was discovered, the consequences would be made public almost immediately. And that is as it should be.
The government works for the people — if the people who make up the government, whether they be elected officials as myself, or bureaucrats appointed by the governor, or public servants employed by a state agency, they are accountable to the public whom they serve. At the state Legislature last year, we went to the other extreme with putting the men and women who serve their communities as police officers under a microscope, second-guessing life and death decisions they are forced to make in a split-second.
Why in the world should that standard not apply to the public servants who take up to three years to make a decision?
The second issue involves the state’s antagonistic attitude toward private career colleges, the defendant in the case.
These institutions exist to fill a gap that has not been filled by traditional post-secondary options, namely providing a chance to those for whom traditional two-or four-year college is not an option.
Institutions like CollegeAmerica provide a way for these folks to get a leg up and offer a chance at success where none may have otherwise existed. But because they fall outside the controlling influence of government, they are deemed a threat.
CollegeAmerica, and other private career colleges like them, find themselves in an untenable situation where the system is stacked against them — a jealous Leviathan of a state that wants them shut down and an unaccountable judiciary that holds their fate in its hands. The saddest part is that the students these colleges serve are the ones who will suffer, after having beaten the odds and gotten to a place where success is in sight, the odds having been stacked against them as well.
Paul Lundeen, a Republican from Monument, serves as state Senate minority whip and represents District 9 (El Paso) in the Colorado Senate.