The 74th General Assembly of the Colorado legislature adjourned the 2024 legislative session on May 8, 2024. Lawmakers introduced 707 bills this session, the fifth most introduced in the last 25 years and 81 more than last year. To put it in context, lawmakers are allowed to introduce five bills each year with 100 state legislators, which should equal 500 bills. Given the five-bill rule, leadership allows more bills to be introduced late into session than is democratically prudent or procedurally appropriate. Furthermore, the majority party also evoked rules 14 and 16 near the end of session, which removed the minority party to filibuster and ensured bill passage.
The Colorado Catholic Conference took a position on 40 bills this session. The CCC was in a support position on 22 bills, an opposed position on nine bills, an amend position on four bills, and a monitor position on five bills. The majority of bills the CCC supported and opposed were sponsored by the majority party or were bipartisan. Here is the breakdown of CCC involvement:
CCC supported that passed: 14
CCC supported that were defeated: 8
CCC opposed that passed: 5
CCC opposed that were defeated: 4
CCC successfully amended: 3
CCC testified on: 19 (in both chambers)
The legislature’s priorities this session included property tax relief and land use reform. Priorities that impacted the Church the most included sanctity of life, religious liberty, marriage and family, economic justice, immigration, and restorative justice. With one week left of session, lawmakers agreed on a tax package to cut the Colorado income tax rate and advance more than $700 million in tax credits to reduce poverty; however, this effort significantly decreased TABOR refunds, negatively impacting all Coloradans.
There are many important considerations in the November ballot. Initiative # 89, “Right to Abortion,” collected enough signatures for its place on the ballot. If enacted, the proposal will remove the 1984 constitutional prohibition against taxpayer-funded abortion, and it is likely the General Assembly would reconvene in 2025 and pass a large allocation for state-funded abortion of Colorado women and women coming into Colorado from pro-life states. The legislature also passed threemjh ç≈vdc fhgrs. ,m concurrent resolutions to place referred measures on the 2024 ballot, including SCR24-003, which removes language from the Colorado Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman, validating same-sex marriage in the Colorado constitution. Additionally, if Republicans lose one seat in the Senate, the Democrats will have a supermajority (two-thirds of the chamber) in both Houses, which would be a veto-proof majority in 2025. While the Church will issue a candidate survey and voter guide (soon-to-be found here), it will not engage in partisan electoral politics; however, Coloradans should be aware that a supermajority of the Democrats will make it difficult to protect sanctity of life, religious freedom, marriage and family, and education issues that are of the utmost importance to the Church, as well as grow the welfare state forcing more Coloradans into poverty.
CCC SUPPORT POSITIONS:
HB 24-1027 Exemption for Children’s Products – DEFEATED
HB 1027 provides some tax relief from January 1-14, 2025, and July 24-August 6, 2025, for babies and toddlers (this could include baby crib/play pen, stroller, safety gate, breast pump or other feeding materials, and diapering supplies and back-to-school purchases for toddlers). The Catholic Church supports policy encouraging familial growth and providing for the most disadvantaged in society.
2. HB 24-1046 Child Welfare System Tools – PASSED
HB 1046 requires reporting of any evidence of known or suspected domestic violence in a child’s home for a case of child abuse and/or neglect, including any evidence of previous cases of known or suspected domestic violence in the child’s home. The Catholic Church supports laws that promote the safety of children.
3. HB 24-1055 Child Passenger Safety & Education – PASSED
HB 1055 creates a new grant funding stream for families to acquire car seats who may be unable to afford otherwise. This also allows ministries, such as Catholic Charities, to provide more resources and child passenger safety devices for needy families.
HB 1280 creates a grant program ($ 2.5 million) for organizations that serve migrants within one year of their arrival in the United States. Many organizations serving migrants in Colorado, including Catholic Charities and other ministries in all three dioceses, are overwhelmed and are operating with limited resources. This bill would address this issue and fill a real need to provide recent arrivals with basic necessities and integration tools that promote human dignity.
SB 035 adds human trafficking to the list of crimes of violence that are subject to enhanced sentencing. The Catholic Church supports policy that promotes the sanctity of human life and protects children.
CCC OPPOSE POSITIONS:
HB 24-1028 Overdose Prevention Centers – DEFEATED
HB 1028 would have created “overdose prevention centers,” aka “safe injection sites,” of controlled substances. Controlled substances in Colorado law. In Canada, where safe injection sites have been tested and are now facing public backlash, public health authorities released a report that showed the so-called safe injection sites did not reduce overall overdose deaths or emergency calls. Instead, they led to an increase in crime, discarded needles, and social disorder in surrounding neighborhoods. Overdose prevention centers compound the drug problem, violate human dignity, and externalize the social costs onto neighbors and small businesses nearby.
2. HB 24-1039 Non-Legal Name Changes – ENACTED
HB 1039 permits public K-12 students to change their name to conform to their perceived “gender identity” as a form of “gender expression.” HB 1039 claims to ban discrimination; however, it codifies discrimination against students and school employees with a different belief about human sexuality and forces them to conform to a minor’s perceived gender identity under threat of school discipline. The bill also erodes parental rights by permitting students to change their names without their parent’s knowledge or consent. The Senate added Title IX enforcement to the law in the final vote.
HB 1124 Discrimination in Places of Accommodation makes all 501(c) non-profit organizations and individual persons and businesses subject to a $3,500 fine for every violation of the new law discrimination based on Colorado’s civil rights law, which would also carry criminal liability. The Colorado Civil Rights statute was amended in 2021 (HB21-1108) to include “sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression” as part of the protected classes against discrimination. Adding “nonprofits” to this list of organizations now explicitly puts Catholic schools, Catholic hospitals, Catholic ministries, and other faith denominations’ ministries in violation of this new public accommodation law — which is a violation of the First Amendment freedom of conscience and expression outside the four walls of a church building. It also unconstitutionally allows the state to apply scrutiny to the definition of institutions “principally used for religious purposes” in the law’s religious exemption, which has federal legal precedent in Colorado to be a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment (Colorado Christian v. Weaver 2008, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado 2018, 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis (2023). The General Assembly rejected CCC amendments.
4. HB 24-1363 Charter Schools Accountability – DEFEATED
HB 1363 would have imposed burdensome regulations on Colorado charter schools, including financial constraints, public transparency beyond traditional public school requirements, and mandates regarding the governing board and student population. This legislation undermines local control and autonomy, which are hallmark components of charter schools. Parents, as the primary educators of the children, deserve to have choices for their child’s education, including charter schools, which are an important part of educational freedom and offer parents an option that differs from the traditional public school.
5. SB 24-068 Medical Aid-in-Dying – PASSED
SB 068 makes expansions to the unjust physician-assisted suicide Proposition 106 (2016) law, including decreasing the waiting period and allowing nurse practitioners to deliver life-ending medication. While valuable amendments were made in committee (led by the CCC), the Catholic Church continues to oppose Colorado SB 068 for its promotion of a culture of death and making bad law (physician-assisted suicide) even worse. Physician-assisted suicide targets the most vulnerable in our society, corrupts medical practice, and distorts the patient-doctor relationship by violating a doctor’s commitment to the health of his patients. Furthermore, physician-assisted suicide distorts obligations to the elderly, disabled, or ill members of our community by viewing them as a burden.
CCC AMEND POSITIONS:
The Catholic Conference is in an amend position on this bill because an amendment protecting the conscience rights of foster care providers and families would ensure a diverse supply of homes for the thousands of children in Colorado foster care. HB 1017 imposes barriers on providers and loving homes. It violates the First Amendment rights of current and prospective foster care families in Colorado by forcing faith-based foster care agencies and families with sincerely held and religiously informed beliefs on human sexuality to violate their consciences or cease participating in foster care. This means that at least eight faith-based foster care agencies will consider closing their doors, and hundreds of loving homes will be inaccessible to the thousands of Colorado children in foster care – statistically, a quarter of whom are also seeking adoption. If this bill is enacted, families who continue to foster children may be compelled by the state to send their child to hormone therapy or so-called “gender-affirming care” if the foster care child desires such medical intervention. The General Assembly rejected CCC amendments; a preliminary injunction will likely be filed.
2. HB 24-1025 Implement Fertility Coverage for Health Plans – DEFEATED
The Catholic Conference is in an amend position because this bill could be improved by including a strengthened religious exemption for faith-based employers and insurance providers from being forced to provide in vitro fertilization (IVF) to employees against their conscience. Current law allows the state to determine what “bona fide” religious practices are, which is a violation of strict scrutiny of the First Amendment’s establishment clause.
“Churches” were removed from the list of organizations the state prohibits concealed carry within, thereby protecting individual churches’ ability to protect themselves with concealed carry permitted individuals.
OTHER SUPPORT POSITIONS:
SB 24-006 Pretrial Diversion Programs – ENACTED
SB 24-053 Racial Equity Study – PASSED
OTHER OPPOSE POSITIONS:
A better approach to helping victims of childhood sex abuse can be found here.
SJR 24-003 Roe v. Wade Anniversary Day – ENACTED
MONITOR POSITIONS:
SB24-084 Attorney General Duties to Prevent Mis- & Dis-information – PASSED (with amendments)
Bills the CCC supported that were defeated: HB 24-1092 Minimum Sentence Crimes against Prostituted Children – DEFEATED
SB 24-122 Empowerment Scholarship Accounts – DEFEATED
Bills the CCC opposed that were defeated:
SB 24-049 Content of Material in Libraries – DEFEATED