New law protects Coloradans with disabilities and their right to live, receive care at home

DENVER — Molly Kirkham and other Coloradans living with disabilities celebrated inside the State Capitol on Wednesday.

A bipartisan bill (House Bill 25-1017) was signed into law last week by Governor Jared Polis, securing the right of Coloradans with disabilities to live and receive care at home instead of a long-term care facility.

“A sense of relief and optimism,” Kirkham said of the bill becoming law. “It's making sure that people are treated as people.”

Last month, Kirkham told Denver7 about her great-aunt, who was institutionalized against her will because of her disabilities.

“She was angry, but she never let that define her,” Kirkham said. “So for me, also, it's kind of in her honor and making sure that that doesn't happen again.”

Politics

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Craig Towler, director of public policy and advocacy for the Center for People with Disabilities and a board member with Disability Law Colorado, said he hopes Colorado can “be an example for other states to follow.”

“It’s really important to show our commitment to human rights and civil rights, and that impacts us all,” he told Denver7.

HB25-1017 codifies the landmark 1999 Olmstead v. L.C. U.S. Supreme Court decision, which ruled that unjustified segregation of people with disabilities is considered discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Under the new state law, even if the Supreme Court reverses course and nullifies that previous decision, those protections will stay in Colorado.

“Getting it codified into state law is important to us because it lets us make sure that we can give those protections consistently,“ said State Rep. Chad Clifford, one of the bill’s sponsors.

Adhering to those protections is something the state has had issues with. Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice settled a lawsuit against Colorado after finding the state violated the ADA by “unnecessarily segregating adults with physical disabilities in nursing facilities.” This new law requires the state’s Disability Opportunity Office to create a plan for how the community can “live, work, and be served in the least restrictive settings possible.”

“The decision itself, even from the Supreme Court level, was never that there's an unending checkbook in order to make something available to the disability community. It is ‘within resources,’” said Clifford. “And given our state's very limited resources, it's very important that we're both planning and executing in a way that the disability community knows what they have access and availability to.”

The state’s integration plan is due by 2028 and will be reviewed and updated every three years. While disability rights advocates call this a win, they say their community still needs to be heard more often.

“We have a saying within our community, ‘Nothing about us, without us,’” Towler said. “We want to really expand that definition to be, ‘Nothing without us.’”

“We want to be treated as a human and we just want to be part of the community,” Kirkham added. “No matter if someone has a disability or not, they're a person at the end of the day.”

HB25-1017 requires the government to provide services to people with disabilities when a state health professional deems it appropriate, when the individual agrees to participate, and if the resources are reasonably available. If budget cuts threaten those services, the state must take all reasonable steps to provide an alternative.

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