Filing a Petition
You should spend some time thinking through your
grievance before bringing to the UCSU Appellate Court. Questions you will have to answer will
include: what is the grievance, against
whom is it, what have you tried to do to resolve it before bringing it to us,
why is the Court the right place to seek redress for the grievance, what do you
want the Court to do about it, why should the Court give you redress? These questions, and a few others, translate
into the parts of filing a petition with the Court.
The elements of a Petition are:
STANDING
to file petition in almost all cases, you have to be a
fee-paying student at CU-Boulder (and you will almost certainly know if you
fall into one of the few exceptions to this).
Sometimes, there are additional requirements, such as being a member of
the Executive staff, a voting member of a Joint Board, enrolled in a particular
college at CU, a member of the Legislative Council or one chamber of it,
etc. The various additional
requirements to demonstrate standing will be used to show that you are somehow
affected by the dispute, and/or that you have a material interest in a
particular outcome. Be sure that you
state clearly, and can prove if challenged, that you meet all of the
requirements for standing that will be relevant to your grievance. If you file a request for a Temporary
Restraining Order (TRO), the Court may hear challenges to standing during the
TRO phase or may hold the question until a full hearing if you are challenged
on this.
JURISDICTION
of the Court why is the question something that the Court can decide? Is this something assigned to the Court to
hear by the UCSU Constitution or other documents? Has the Court heard cases of similar origin of the grievance
before? Although challenges to this are
becoming less frequent, the would-be petitioner disregards this at his or her
peril. In TRO matters, the Court is
unlikely to leave a jurisdictional question unresolved.
RIPENESS
of the case this is a legalese phrase that takes many words to explain, and
much practice to understand. It means that the dispute has progressed to the
point where there is some action the Court can evaluate. You must also demonstrate either that there
are no other lesser places where you can seek redress or that you have tried
all of the other lesser places and still have a grievance. For example, if the Legislative Council has
a bill that takes two readings to adopt, and the bill has only been heard once,
the case is not yet ripe. The Court
is likely to be very fussy about this point, so a petitioner should pay
particular attention to this issue, especially if the petitioner files a TRO
request.
MOOTNESS of the case flipside of
ripeness. The question cant be brought
to the Court after the matter is settled by other means. For example, one can not challenge something
from the budgets from the previous fiscal year as that year is over and done,
and the university has closed the books on it.
As with ripeness, expect the Court to be fussy if this is at all under
dispute.
GRIEVANCE
and DISPUTE the lay person will
almost always be proceeding from an actual grievance (e.g., filled out the
insurance waiver form and submitted it before the deadline, but still got
charged). Sometimes, though, someone
may want a clarification of interpreting the governing documents before
undertaking an action. A request for
this is considered to be seeking an "advisory opinion" and the Court
will not give such. Make sure that you
have an actual grievance (you may be familiar with the phrase "actual case
and controversy" from the US Constitution; grievance is, hopefully, a
clearer term for the same concept). How
are you harmed by what is happening or not happening? These can be direct tangible harm (e.g., unnecessarily paying a
Wardenburg fee) or indirect tangible harm (e.g, someone is improperly promoting
one religion in preference to others using student fee monies) or intangible
harm (harder to prove). The dispute
aspect of this means that there is someone who is in disagreement with you;
someone against whom you file the petition.
This does not have to be a real person, it could be a UCSU cost center,
student group, provisions of bill (although you will file against the person
carrying out or enforcing those provisions), etc. The Court may restructure your petition to ensure that the
grievance and dispute are properly presented; this is as much to ensure an
adequate response and defense as to ensure that the proper issue is being
addressed.
REQUEST
FOR TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDER sometimes things
move so fast that waiting to schedule a hearing on the grievance may make it
impossible, or at least very difficult, to undo later the thing that causes the
grievance. In these cases, the petitioner
should ask the Court for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) to be filed. A TRO request, if granted by the Court,
should not be considered the end of the problem; the 'temporary' in TRO means
'until the Court can resolve the underlying question.' There is a separate explanation for the
specifics of a request for a TRO.
MERITS
of the case tell the Court why the interpretation that most favors you of the
governing documents that are in question in the current dispute is the right
or best one for the Court to adopt.
There may be several points in the governing documents that are
relevant; address all of them in your initial filing. The Court may restrict your ability to add new grounds for
complaint at later points in the process.
You do not have to provide a full explanation of your merits in the
filing of the petition that is usually done in the briefs, bills of
particulars, or interrogatories but you should give an indication as to how
you intend to argue that the governing documents support your position. As above, the respondent has a right to know
the things that are to be argued in the case that he or she can prepare and
present an adequate response.
REMEDY
What do you want the Court to do?
Examples include: waiving a fee,
overturning a decision by a committee, permanently stopping implementation of a
Legislative Council bill, declaring a candidate ineligible for violating
campaign rules, etc. The Court must
have the ability to implement the requested remedy, and the requested remedy
should be the least intrusive means of redressing the grievance (yes, this is a
legalese sentence, and awkward to put into lay terms outside of the context of
an individual case). There are limits
on what the Court can do, and sometimes circumstances make available remedies
that are not available under other circumstances, or vice versa.
Supplemental documents in the paragraph on
merits, three types of supplemental documents were referenced. The distinctions among these are
subtle. Briefs usually are oriented
toward the merits of the case, the governing documents and competing
interpretations thereof, and are commonly used to expand arguments suggested in
an initial filing. This is often the
only place where new merits can be added after the filing of a petition. Bills of particulars are usually used to
address things that should have been in a petition but weren't, or to clarify
the grievance or whether or not a TRO should be requested. Interrogatories are usually directed toward
the facts (the actions taken or not taken).
There is overlap among these three things. Do not be afraid to ask for clarification if the Court presents
you with requests for one or more of these.
How the filing process will work: