As we do after every legislative session, we prepared a legislative scorecard so you, our members and supporters, can see where each legislator stands on civil liberties issues.
View the 2016 ACLU of Colorado Legislative Scorecard.

This year, we picked six bills to score on the scorecard. The ACLU was of course involved in many other legislative initiatives, but these six represent a cross section of civil liberties issues we work on – mass incarceration, economic justice, solitary confinement and immigrant rights – and those we played a significant role in as they made their way to the Governor’s desk.
Thanks to the hard work of our dedicated bill sponsors, staff, members, and volunteers, each of the six top priority bills passed through the legislature with bipartisan support and are now law.
As in other years, the ACLU championed and defeated many bills that are not reflected on the scorecard. For example, for the second year in a row, the Right to Rest Act was defeated in its first committee hearing. The bill prohibited Colorado municipalities from enacting laws that criminalize our growing homeless population. We also advocated in favor of a law that would make it easier for transgender individuals to change their gender on their birth certificate. This, too, was defeated on a party line vote in a Senate committee, after gaining bipartisan support in the House chamber.
We were successful working in coalition to defeat the many bills attempting to limit a woman’s access to reproductive health options, to limit access to voting through photo ID bills and the like, and to create enhanced penalties for already existing crimes. Finally and with the help of Senate Republicans, we were able to again defeat an attempt to expand the State’s DNA database by collecting DNA from individuals convicted of committing certain misdemeanors.
Find out how your legislators voted in the 2016 ACLU of Colorado Legislative Scorecard.

This commentary from ACLU of Colorado speaker and volunteer Darren O'Connor first appeared in the Boulder Weekly on June 9, 2016.

The beauty of Boulder, nestled in the Foothills and dominated by the Flatirons, is a metro area gem that attracts a great number of visitors and would be residents wishing to enjoy its charms. Its reputation as an idyllic, liberal city, however, was recently tainted by University of Denver Law School’s report, Too High A Price: What Criminalizing Homelessness Costs Colorado.
Boulder was found to issue citations for camping at more than twice the rate of Fort Collins, and 19 times that of Colorado Springs — the cities that issue the greatest number of camping citations after Boulder. Eighty-seven percent of those receiving such citations in Boulder identified as homeless, and 84 percent of the citations were only for camping.
While City Councilmembers would be at legal risk if they admitted camping and other laws primarily target unhoused people, one is reminded of Anatole France’s quote, “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”
Ironically, Boulder laws require pet owners provide, “enclosed structure sufficient to protect the animal from wind, rain, snow, or sun,” yet camping is against the law and prohibits in part using shelter. In the ordinance, shelter is defined such that it “includes, without limitation, any cover or protection from the elements other than clothing.” Thus, a homeless person with a pet must both provide it shelter against the elements and avoid use for themselves of any such protection, lest they be ticketed.
In contrast to the camping ordinance language, City Attorney Tom Carr recently stated, “Our camping ordinance doesn’t ban shelter, it doesn’t ban blankets. It is a reasonable and moderate response to prohibit camping on public property.” As a member of the homeless advocacy group Boulder Rights Watch, I requested a clarification from Carr on the disparity between his statement and the ordinance, but my request went unanswered.
Boulder officials and members of the community recently traveled to Portland, Oregon, where Mayor Hales spoke to them decrying as inhumane having the police tell people, “You can’t pitch a tent here.” Returning from the trip, where they visited Eugene Oregon’s Opportunity Village, Council Member Aaron Brockett stated, “I saw new ways to work on problems that we haven’t been pursuing so far.”
Others on the trip, notably Councilmembers Shoemaker and Appelbaum (who did not visit Opportunity Village), referred to Boulder’s response to homelessness (shelters and overflow shelters that address a fraction of the unhoused that executive director of the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless estimated at 1,500 people), as “a much better product.” Those on Council who appear supportive of not criminalizing homelessness through its camping law have received recent support for such a move, with ACLU of Colorado’s Denise Maes and Mark Silverstein speaking at city council meetings.
I have also challenged the City with videos showing Officer Lord, questioning a man near the library where unhoused people congregate, for holding an unlit cigarette, stating on camera that, “It’s not us that just comes down here willy-nilly, we come down here because the City Manager has asked us,” going on to say, “They can leave the city of Boulder, they can leave the state of Colorado, they can leave the country if they want to.”
Boulder must work on both their laws and how police enforce them; otherwise they must admit that its beauty, its open space, and even its streets are only open to the wealthy.
Darren O’Connor has lived in Boulder since 1994, where he received his masters degree in electrical engineering and is a social justice advocate with groups including Boulder Rights Watch, Denver Homeless Out Loud and Boulder Coalition and Alliance on Race.

DENVER - Federal District Court Judge Marcia Krieger today denied plaintiffs’ request to issue an unprecedented emergency order requiring the Douglas County School District school voucher program to divert taxpayer funds to private religious schools.   

The ACLU of Colorado, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, and the law firm Arnold & Porter - who successfully challenged the program before the Colorado Supreme Court last year - intervened last month in the case to challenge the plaintiffs’ collateral attack on that decision. 

ACLU cooperating attorney Matt Douglas of Arnold & Porter issued the following statement, on behalf of the ACLU of Colorado, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion.

“We commend the District Court’s ruling today in which the court agreed that this case is a clear attempt to circumvent the Colorado State Supreme Court decision of last year striking down the original Douglas County school voucher program as a violation of the Colorado Constitution.

“The Court also expressed serious doubts as to whether the case should go forward, given that the plaintiffs and the defendants clearly want the same result – to direct taxpayer funds to private, religious schools.  While denying the plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunction, the Court invited motions to dismiss the case outright, which we intend to file.

“As we’ve argued throughout this case, and as the Colorado Supreme Court affirmed, parents are free to send their children to private, religious schools if they wish, but taxpayers should not be forced to pay for it.”
 

more on this case

more on the voucher case