4/17/2015
DENVER – The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado issued the following statement today on SB 268, the “Personhood” bill introduced in the Colorado State Senate on April 14:
“The ACLU of Colorado strongly opposes Senate Bill 268, the latest in a long line of attempts to change Colorado’s laws to establish legal personhood at conception.
“Colorado voters and legislators have repeatedly recognized the dangerous consequences of defining a fertilized egg as a person and have summarily rejected all previous “personhood” initiatives, even those cloaked in deceptive language and intentions.
“We extend our deepest sympathies to Michelle Wilkins and her family.  What she experienced was tragic and horrifying.  But her personal tragedy should not be used to push an unnecessary statute or an extreme political agenda.
“Colorado’s Crimes Against Pregnant Women Act was carefully crafted and enacted by the legislature for exactly this type of case.  It provides for severe criminal penalties against offenders who wrongfully harm a woman and cause her to lose a pregnancy, and it does so without interfering with reproductive rights. In this case, the alleged perpetrator has been charged with multiple felonies and faces a sentence of more than 100 years in prison.
“SB 268 contains language that is ambiguous and unclear.  If it were passed, it would ultimately be up to the courts to decide the true scope of the law and its effects on reproductive health and the rights of women.  The one thing that is clear is that this bill aims to permanently alter our laws to grant legal personhood at conception, a perilous legal precedent that would open a Pandora’s box of dangerous consequences, both intended and unintended, for Colorado women and their families.”

April 15, 2015
DENVER – Today, the State, Veterans, and Military Affairs Committee of the Colorado House of Representatives will hear testimony on House Bill 1264, a bill to ensure that all people, regardless of their economic circumstances or social status, have the right to rest and move about in public places without fear of being ticketed, harassed, or arrested.
The following is the prepared testimony of ACLU of Colorado Executive Nathan Woodliff-Stanley on HB 1264:

It has become clear to the ACLU that the Right to Rest Act is both timely and desperately needed.
There has been a rapid acceleration in the past few years of municipalities across Colorado criminalizing homelessness, making it illegal to do everything necessary for survival when homeless, including the harmless act of sleeping or resting, by banning it pretty much anywhere.
Having no home is not a crime, but it is difficult to find people in that circumstance who have not experienced ticketing, arrest, jail time, unaffordable fines or harsh encounters with law enforcement, mostly just for existing in the wrong place and time, violating curfew or loitering laws, ordinances against camping or even sitting, lying down, or sleeping in your own legally parked car.
Without a state law protecting peaceful rest and survival for those without a home, we will continue to see a race to the bottom as municipalities compete to be the most hostile to people experiencing homelessness, hoping to drive them somewhere else, anywhere else.
I could share countless stories and examples, such as our client David Madison who was turned away from homeless shelters with no more room on a cold night in Boulder, arrested under a camping ban for using a sleeping bag.  He could have legally slept in only his clothes at 11 degrees, but the sleeping bag counted as illegal shelter, so he was treated as a criminal.
In Fort Collins, the ACLU found that police were arresting people under aggressive panhandling laws for silently holding signs, going far beyond the law itself, as well as Constitutional boundaries.  In Wheat Ridge, laws against loitering on school grounds are being used to arrest people for sitting on park benches nowhere near a school.  In Larimer County there has been a spike in arrests around homelessness, and these arrests are costly.  In a four-year period ending August of 2014, taxpayers had to pay for Larimer County jails to hold people who were homeless or transient for 96,475 inmate days.
It is hard enough to be homeless without facing a constant threat of arrest, often literally for doing nothing, being pushed out of public spaces that are supposed to be public, having your civil liberties violated and being unable to meet your most basic human needs, including simple rest.  I have to ask, if you truly have no home, just where exactly are you supposed to go?
Read the Colorado Right to Rest Act: http://coloradohomelessbillofrights.org/colorado-right-to-rest-act/

Visit the ACLU of Colorado Criminalization of Homelessness campaign page: https://aclu-co.org/campaigns/criminalization-homelessness/

(This guest column originally appeared in the Boulder Daily Camera. It was written by a Boulder County ACLU Chapter Board member.)

By John Carlson

Homelessness is not a crime. It's a status, the product of poverty. Or mental illness. Or sudden misfortune, like a big medical bill that leads to a foreclosure. It's generally acquired innocently or involuntarily, and sleeping on streets or parks is its inevitable consequence. That's because human beings are biologically compelled to rest, whether by sitting, lying, or sleeping. And given that shelter is unavailable to many of the homeless — the Boulder shelter currently offers just 60 beds in the summer, more in the winter but still fewer than needed — it's not clear what choice homeless people have but to sleep in parks or streets.
Yet in response to this involuntary act, Boulder, like other cities, has turned many of the homeless into criminals, including those who have been denied beds at public shelters. The city's no-camping law, as it is known, is as absurd as it is cruel. It prohibits sleeping outside with "shelter," defined as any protection from the elements other than clothing. So merely sleeping outside is not "camping," but sleeping while using a blanket or sleeping bag is a crime. A few years ago, the Colorado Supreme Court refused to hear a case brought by the ACLU challenging the ordinance. David Madison was charged as an illegal "camper" after he slept outside in a sleeping bag, on a night when temperatures dropped to 11 degrees.
Madison had sought refuge at a homeless shelter earlier that evening, but there was no space for him. He was found guilty based on the trial court's ruling that his frost-covered sleeping bag constituted shelter. Had he jettisoned the sleeping bag he would have suffered frostbite or hypothermia, or worse, but he wouldn't have been a criminal.
A bill wending its way through the Colorado legislature aims at repealing no-camping ordinances like Boulder's. Dubbed the Right to Rest Act (House Bill 15-1264), it is set for a hearing on April 15 before the Senate Veterans and Military Affairs Committee. It would protect the right of all people to rest or sleep in public places without discrimination; to eat and share food there; to have privacy in one's belongings; and to occupy one's legally parked vehicle. It would not stop police from intervening to prevent criminal activity, like trespassing, obstructing sidewalks, or aggressive panhandling.
The bill's sponsors point to data showing that significant numbers of homeless people in Colorado have been ticketed or arrested for sleeping, sitting, or lying down in public areas. The sponsors also highlight the illusory appeal of criminal laws targeting the homeless. Jailing a few illegal campers doesn't make them disappear. They just migrate to other cities, which in turn enact and enforce their own criminal bans.
The Boulder County ACLU supports the Right to Rest Act. It's a protest against the immorality of criminalizing rather than confronting the problems of homelessness. If enacted, and we hope it is, it will tell cities struggling to deal with their homeless populations to do more than simply shift the problem from streets to jails. If it is defeated, the punitive approach favored by Boulder will continue to expand, eventually spreading criminal bans to all regions of the state and beyond, at which point a public that has steadfastly refused to build housing for its homeless populations will be forced to build new jails for all the criminals it has created.
If anything, the Right to Rest Act does not go far enough. It does not specifically repeal local laws banning sleeping in public places. Instead it guarantees the right to rest in public spaces "without discrimination based on housing status," defining "discrimination" as any action resulting in disproportionate effects on the homeless. We fear that cities bent on defending their punitive policies will not bow to the clear intent of the law, convinced they don't discriminate against anybody (who thinks otherwise?) and confident they can resist a legal test requiring proof of disproportionate effects. We want a state law that encourages clever solutions to the crisis of homelessness, not one that encourages clever legal arguments.
Granted, there may be valid environmental and sanitary reasons for a municipality to balk at an unqualified right to camp in all public spaces. The ACLU would not oppose reasonable restraints on that right. But these restrictions should be narrow in scope and should never be used to target, harass, and criminalize people who have no other options and nowhere else to go.
John Carlson is on the board of the Boulder County chapter of the ACLU.