DENVER — Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said Wednesday he has filed suit against the Trump administration to prevent it from relocating U.S. Space Command from Colorado Springs to Huntsville, Alabama.
At a virtual news conference earlier in the day, Weiser said President Trump’s decision last month to move command headquarters from Colorado was unconstitutional and unlawful as it violates federal law requiring public notices and reports to Congress before moving a major military headquarters location.
Weiser the lawsuit was also challenging the administration’s attempt to meddle with Colorado’s mail-in voting system, which the president described as a “very corrupt voting system” and citing it as “a big factor” in his decision to relocate U.S. Space Command.
“The Constitution does not permit the Executive Branch to punish or retaliate against states for lawfully exercising powers reserved for them, such as the power to regulate elections,” Weiser said. “If we don’t take a stand now against this unconstitutional and unlawful decision, Colorado and other states that use mail-in voting will face further pressure or punishment unless they give up their constitutional authority.”
Weiser said the U.S. Supreme Court has “repeatedly affirmed” that states alone have the power to regulate their own elections under the Tenth Amendment, a power that that neither the president nor the executive branch has under the U.S. Constitution.
Since mail-in voting was enacted in 2013, “there is not a shred of evidence that the outcome of any election within Colorado has been altered by fraud,” Weiser said. “In fact, this system has been embraced, implemented, and supported by both Democrats and Republicans in Colorado.”
You can read the lawsuit for yourself in the embed below or by clicking here.
The tug of war between the two states and opposing administrations about where to locate U.S. Space Command stretches back to 2021, when the Air Force identified Army Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville as the preferred location for the new U.S. Space Command. The city was picked after site visits to six states that compared factors such as infrastructure capacity, community support and costs to the Defense Department.
Then-President Joe Biden in 2023 announced Space Command would be permanently located in Colorado Springs which had been serving as its temporary headquarters. Biden's Democratic administration said that keeping the command in Colorado Springs would avoid a disruption in readiness.
A review by the Defense Department inspector general, however, was inconclusive and could not determine why Colorado was chosen over Alabama. Trump, a Republican who enjoys deep support in Alabama, had long been expected to move Space Command back to the state.
While Republican leaders in Alabama praised the decision, the same couldn’t be said of Colorado Republicans, who joined state Democrats to decry the move by the Trump administration last month.
In a joint statement hours after the decision had been announced, Colorado’s entire congressional delegation said moving U.S. Space Command “sets our space defense apparatus back years, wastes billions of taxpayer dollars, and hands the advantage to the converging threats of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.”
"Space Command’s long-term presence in Colorado Springs has also created a large number of civilian businesses and workers on which the Command now relies. Those people will not simply move with the Command at the military’s whim. Many of them will leave the industry altogether, creating a disruption in the workforce that will take our national defense systems decades to recreate,” they wrote.
Weiser — who is running for Colorado’s gubernatorial seat next year — said Wednesday’s lawsuit was seeking an order blocking the administration from taking any steps to relocate U.S. Space Command headquarters, and from taking further action to implement the move without following the requirements set in federal law.
It's the second lawsuit filed by the attorney general this week — and the 41st against the Trump administration — since Trump took office for a second time back in January.
On Tuesday, Weiser sued the Trump administration for blocking access to contingency funds of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which have been put on hold for November due to the government shutdown.
- Explore the history over the fight to relocate U.S. Space Command in the timeline below:
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