DENVER – Allison Eid, a Colorado Supreme Court justice, is on Donald Trump’s list of possible successors to the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, on Wednesday released a list of 11 potential justices he plans to vet to fill Scalia’s seat on the nation’s high court. Trump’s campaign said the list was compiled “first and foremost, based on constitutional principles, with input from highly respected conservatives and Republican Party leadership.”
Eid declined to comment Wednesday.
Educated at the University of Chicago, Eid is a former state solicitor general and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. She also was an associate professor at the University of Colorado School of Law before then-Republican Gov. Bill Owens appointed her to the Colorado Supreme Court in 2006.
The Republican U.S. Senate majority has refused to take up President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland, the chief judge of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, to take Scalia’s seat. Scalia died in February.
In 2012, Eid sharply dissented from a court opinion that upheld a congressional redistricting map that made several Colorado seats more competitive.
Eid argued, in part, that redistricting should be as minimally disruptive to existing districts as possible. She called the latest round, which moved 1.4 million Coloradans to a different congressional district, “astonishing,” especially because Colorado didn’t gain or lose any seats.
In 2009, Eid was the lone dissenting vote in a court decision that upheld a property tax measure for schools. Opponents argued the measure was unconstitutional because it wasn’t directly approved by voters, as required under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. She agreed.
“The purpose of (TABOR) ‘is to require that the voters decide for themselves the necessity for the imposition of new tax burdens,’ “ she wrote.
Eid served as an assistant and speechwriter for William J. Bennett, the U.S. education secretary under President Ronald Reagan. In 2002, President George W. Bush appointed her to a permanent committee that prepares an official history of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Eid is married to Troy Eid, a former U.S. attorney for Colorado and nationally recognized expert on Native American tribal law.
