Below is a summary of the bills pending in this year's Colorado General Assembly which potentially effect the rights of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered persons in Colorado. These are bills which Equal Rights Colorado is either actively supporting, actively opposing, or monitoring.
Equal Rights Colorado's lobbying activities include coordinating hearing testimony for bills we support or oppose; communicating with state senators and representatives regarding our position on bills; and working with legislators to draft bills that promote the rights of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered persons in Colorado.
The status of these bills will be updated throughout the session so you can monitor a bill's progress through the legislative process. We will also post the dates, times, and locations of hearings for these bills on our calendar and will periodically email "Action Alerts" to our members informing them of important activity on a bill.
Please take a look at the Calendar to see when a hearing will be held.
2008 Legislation
SB 200 - "Expansion of Discrimination Prohibitions" bill - VICTORY!!
Introduced by Sen. Jennifer Veiga and Rep. Joel Judd, SB 08-200 will expand language prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, including transgender status, in housing practices, public accommodation, eligibility for jury service, availability of family planning services, as well as many other areas.
This is a chance to update the current laws in order to have consistency and predictability in the way Colorado's anti-discrimination laws are applied. It will also add sex, marital status, disability, age, national origin, ancestry and religion as needed.
We must be sure to have protections not only against blatant acts of discrimination that occur, but also against the subtle discrimination that remains so pervasive.
This bill passed the Senate, the House and on May 29, 2008 was signed into law by Governor Ritter!
SB 125 - "Harmful to Minors" bill - DEFEATED!!
The “Harmful to Minors" bill concerned regulating sexually explicit representations that are harmful to minors, made it a Class 2 misdemeanor to distribute sexually explicit material or exhibit a sexually explicit performance to minors. The language of this bill was written so broadly that it could include much HIV/AIDS/STD and other healthy living instruction for GLBTQ youth in Colorado. Equal Rights Colorado provided testimony in opposition to this bill in committee and were successful in defeating it.
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