Judge Ericka Englert closed the courtroom following opening statements, preventing the public from hearing testimony by doctors who previously offered gender-affirming care. They had asked the court to allow them to testify anonymously, citing fears of threats.

Children’s halted puberty blockers and hormonal therapy for transgender youth in December, citing threats from the Trump administration to prevent any hospital offering that care from billing Medicaid for any services. The hospital, located in Aurora, does not perform gender-affirming surgeries on people under 18.

The families of four transgender girls sued Children’s shortly afterward, arguing the hospital’s ban amounted to discrimination based on gender identity, because it provided the same services to cisgender youth for other diagnoses.

The case reached the Colorado Supreme Court, which ordered Children’s in May to reinstate care. The hospital argued that it complied by lifting its ban, but its providers independently decided not to take the legal risk of offering that care. The plaintiffs countered that the court order wasn’t intended to just change a policy, but to make care accessible.

John McHugh, attorney for the suing families, said in court Thursday that if Children’s can get around state antidiscrimination laws by deferring decisions to its medical providers, it could also claim to be doing nothing wrong if a doctor was only willing to treat white patients.

He asked the court to fine Children’s $50,000 per day until the hospital resumes gender-affirming care.

“The duty to comply always lies with the hospital,” he said.

Elliot Peters, who represented Children’s, said the court order required the hospital to lift its prohibition on providing gender-affirming care, which it has done.

The hospital can’t force its doctors — who technically work for the University of Colorado’s School of Medicine — to offer certain types of care, particularly when they have well-founded fears of federal persecution, he said.

“Children’s Colorado has no say over care by providers it does not even employ,” he said.

The courtroom reopened to the public for the last hour of testimony, when two mothers of transgender children spoke about how their care halted. McHugh focused on their interactions with the hospital, which assigned them a provider after they initiated care for gender dysphoria, while Children’s legal team pointed to providers’ testimony that they made their own decisions.

One mother, testifying under the name Denise Doe, said her daughter’s provider seemed distressed to have to stop care, crying on a call with her. The provider testified Thursday that they decided on their own, but Doe said she remembered their conversation slightly differently.

“They said the decision was made in partnership, I guess, with their peers,” she said.

Stopping gender-affirming care has been a federal priority since President Donald Trump began his second term.

In July 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a subpoena for patients’ records and doctors’ personnel files at Children’s, though that has remained on hold since a federal magistrate judge recommended throwing it out.

In December, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that facilities and doctors who provide gender-affirming care could lose the right to bill Medicare and Medicaid — a massive financial blow.

So far, that provision hasn’t taken effect, but three hospitals have settled with the federal government over their transgender care programs, paying fines and, in at least one case, cutting ties with doctors who offered those services.

The hearing will continue Friday.

In May, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in favor of families who sued after Children’s Hospital in Aurora halted gender-affirming care for their transgender kids and teens, following a threat from the Trump administration to cut federal funding to facilities that offer that care to minors.

The justices instructed a Denver district judge to order the hospital to resume prescribing puberty blockers and hormones as needed for gender dysphoria — distress when one’s sense of self doesn’t match what others see. Children’s does not perform gender-affirming surgeries on minors.

The hospital said it had complied, but that none of its medical providers were willing to risk being targeted by the federal government for providing gender-affirming care. The plaintiffs argued Children’s was in contempt, because the ordered services aren’t actually available.

The providers, who used Greek letters as pseudonyms in court filings, aren’t facing contempt citations themselves, but will have to testify at the Sept. 10 contempt hearing. On Thursday, the group asked Judge Ericka Englert to file a protective order hiding their names and any other identifying information from the public, as well as not showing their faces to the public during their video testimony.

The doctors, and possibly others with prescribing authority, said they would face increased federal pressure, as well as the possibility of death threats from people who don’t agree with how they treated transgender children, if their identities became public.

“The climate in which this lawsuit is occurring changes daily and is hostile. Providers who have provided gender-affirming care in health systems similar to Children’s had their medical staff privileges permanently revoked as part of a settlement with the (U.S.) Department of Justice,” the providers’ motion said.

Children’s spokeswoman Rachael Fowler said the hospital supports the providers’ safety and privacy, and hasn’t objected to suppressing their identities.

Paula Greisen, who is representing the plaintiffs, raised objections to some of the providers’ specific requests, such as that the court prevent attorneys from asking about their backgrounds. She said she didn’t oppose allowing them to use pseudonyms, however.

“The patients and the medical providers who have given them life-saving medical care are all the victims of the federal administration’s witch hunt against the transgender community. They should all be respected and protected from harm,” she said in a statement.

Englert hasn’t yet ruled on the motion. She did grant a separate request, allowing the plaintiffs to act as a class on behalf of all transgender children who sought gender-affirming care through the hospital, or would have done if it hadn’t halted those services.

Greisen said more than 1,000 young people are no longer able to receive care, so acting as a class makes sense. Children’s gender-care program had 1,140 patients in 2025, including 257 who received puberty blockers and 549 taking hormone therapy, according to court documents.

Younger children only undergo monitoring for , so they can decide whether to start blockers.

Knowing the scope of the class will allow the hospital to evaluate its next legal steps, Fowler said.

“Our focus remains on caring for children and supporting our patients and families during what we know is a stressful and uncertain time,” she said in a statement.

Updated 12 p.m. Aug. 31, 2026: Due to a reporter’s error, this story incorrectly reported that a judge had allowed the Children’s Hospital Colorado doctors to testify anonymously. The judge had not ruled yet on that request. The story has been corrected.

My first full day at work as a United States Senator was January 6th. A few days later, we unexpectedly learned that after a secretive Oval Office meeting, Trump had decided to move U.S. Space Command from its historical headquarters in Republican-leaning Colorado Springs to Alabama.

That was just the beginning.

In the years that followed, President Trump’s anger toward Colorado only grew. After the Colorado Supreme Court determined in 2023 that he had engaged in insurrection and was therefore disqualified from the ballot under the 14th Amendment, he lashed out at the ruling.

Then, after former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters was rightfully convicted by a jury of her peers for undermining Colorado’s free and fair election system, President Trump embraced her. To most Coloradans, Peters was and is a disgrace. To Trump, she was a martyr.

Upon taking office again, President Trump reversed the Biden administration’s permanent basing decision, ordering the fully operational Space Command to relocate to Alabama, threatening thousands of jobs and our military readiness. His administration denied disaster assistance to Colorado communities rebuilding from wildfires and floods. He even vetoed bipartisan legislation to bring clean drinking water to 39 southeastern Colorado communities.

His administration has also moved to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, and canceled more than $100 million in transportation grants and hundreds of millions in clean energy investments. They froze funding for child care, food assistance, and other services for vulnerable families. The EPA overrode Colorado’s regional haze plan, undermining years of state-led work to reduce pollution. The list goes on and on.

We now know that these relentless attacks weren’t merely coincidence. Last week, an email disclosed in court revealed that officials at the highest levels of the White House were directed to orchestrate political retribution against Coloradans.

I’ve called for an investigation into the administration’s targeting of our state. Our country needs to fully understand how federal resources were manipulated to punish innocent Coloradans, both Republicans and Democrats. Government resources belong to the American people. They are not weapons to wield against the president����ap enemies.

Coloradans are already struggling with the cost of groceries, housing, health care, and other essentials. All across Colorado, families, farmers, and small business owners are struggling to stay afloat. But instead of lowering prices, President Trump and his allies are misusing federal power and putting political priorities ahead of the public interest. We’re fighting back.

When President Trump proposed a Department of Justice fund to compensate election criminals like Tina Peters and those who attacked the Capitol on January 6, we led the opposition against it. When Republicans proposed selling up to three million acres of public lands across Colorado and ten other Western states to the highest bidder, we rallied lawmakers from across the aisle to defeat it. When critical weather and climate science was under attack, we held up an appropriations package for weeks over efforts to close NCAR and worked with Democrats and Republicans to protect the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) access to critical weather data.

There’s no shortage of pressing problems to fix: the cost-of-living emergency, runaway healthcare costs, and mass deportations that are inflicting terror. These challenges require pragmatic solutions, not grinding political axes. The White House’s continued fixation on the 2020 election, Tina Peters, and indeed the state of Colorado, isn’t getting us any closer to addressing them.

Coloradans shouldn’t pay the price for the petty grievances and failed policies that make their lives harder. We need to continue holding this administration accountable, fighting back against the president����ap attacks on Colorado, and lowering costs for working families.

John Hickenlooper is a U.S. Senator representing Colorado.

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Hood, who has been a member of the court since 2014, will replace Chief Justice Monica Márquez, whose term expires in August 2027.

“Justice Hood brings deep experience, steady judgment, and a genuine commitment to the people we serve,” Márquez said in a Friday. “I’ve had the privilege of working alongside him for many years, and I know he will approach this role with the integrity and thoughtfulness it demands. I look forward to supporting him throughout his onboarding year and ensuring a smooth transition for the branch.”

Before Hood arrived at the Supreme Court, he spent seven years as a judge on the Denver District Court. He previously served as a litigation partner with Isaacson Rosenbaum P.C. in Denver and spent 10 years as a prosecutor in Colorado’s 18th Judicial District.

“I am honored by the confidence my colleagues have placed in me. Our judicial branch is filled with dedicated professionals who work every day to deliver justice for the people of Colorado, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to support that work in this new role,” Hood said in the release. “I appreciate Chief Justice Márquez’s leadership and her willingness to guide me through the year ahead as I prepare for this transition.”

The chief justice serves a three-year rotating term. The incoming chief justice completes a one-year onboarding process, mentoring under the current chief justice to learn the ins and outs of the job.

Judge Vincente Vigil dismissed a felony child sex-assault case after finding the CBI’s inaction, even after multiple coworkers raised concerns about the quality of Woods’ work, rose to the level of outrageous government conduct, that is, “conduct that violates fundamental fairness and is shocking to the universal sense of justice,” he wrote in an Aug. 2 order.

It’s extremely rare for Colorado courts to find that official misconduct meets the legal standard of outrageous government conduct; the threshold for such a finding is “exceedingly high,” the judge noted.

“The management at CBI at best fostered a workplace culture where case processing numbers were prioritized over rigorous technical oversight, and at worst actively sought to shield Ms. Woods, a favored employee, from having her deficient work product come to light,” Vigil wrote.

The Weld County District Attorney’s Office appealed the judge’s ruling to the Colorado Supreme Court on Monday. The filing was suppressed and was not available Tuesday.

“The fact of the matter is that Ms. Woods chose to become a cancer within the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, and that agency chose first to ignore, then place a bandage on the tumor until it could no longer be hidden from public view,” the judge wrote in the scathing six-page order. “When the integrity of our justice system is (compromised) as it was here, if we as the judiciary do not condemn such intolerable acts, we make a choice to tolerate them.”

Woods mishandled DNA testing in at least 1,045 criminal cases during her 29-year career at the statewide criminal justice agency, an internal investigation found. She deleted, omitted and manipulated data to speed up the testing process and boost her productivity, creating unreliable DNA testing results in hundreds of criminal cases and sending shockwaves through Colorado’s criminal courts.

The 65-year-old former scientist in June pleaded guilty to four felonies related to the data manipulation. She will be sentenced to between eight and 16 years in prison on Sept. 8.

Several of Woods’ colleagues raised repeated ethical concerns about her work years before the scandal broke open — in 2014 and again in 2018 — but the CBI failed to stop her misconduct until an intern discovered a pattern of missing DNA data in Woods’ work in 2023. That discovery prompted the first serious inquiry into Woods’ misconduct on the job, leading authorities to uncover the full scope of her crimes.

Rob Low, a spokesman for CBI, said in a statement Tuesday that the bureau is monitoring the case.

“We have tremendous respect for the courts and the judicial process and will watch the appellate review of this case,” he said. “We stand firmly behind the integrity of our Forensic Lab.”

Vigil found that the CBI had “little taste for oversight” and described the agency’s inaction as “incomprehensible.” Woods’ conduct “left a dark mark on the history of Colorado justice,” he wrote in the order.

“The Woods scandal is not merely about one case, but the conduct of the government over a shockingly wide field,” the judge wrote. “If the scope and breadth of the Woods’ scandal does not constitute outrageous government conduct, this Court would struggle to imagine something that would. If this is not outrageous government conduct, then that doctrine may as well not exist.”

Vigil dismissed a charge of sex assault on a child against 31-year-old Daniel Eatinger filed in connection with a 2018 incident in Greeley in which a girl said a stranger broke into her bedroom while she was sleeping, sexually assaulted her and then left through a window.

DNA testing conducted by Woods found Eatinger’s DNA in a bite mark on the girl’s body, according to an affidavit and the judge’s order.

The order did not detail whether Eatinger’s case was one of the thousand that Woods mishandled, but suggested it does not matter — a judge can make findings of outrageous government conduct for actions that impact the integrity of the judicial system, not just for actions that impact a particular defendant, Vigil wrote.

Eatinger, a registered sex offender, was previously convicted of a sexual battery charge in Florida in connection with an between the ages of 12 and 16, according to Florida court records.

Vigil noted in his order that he is aware of only one instance in state history in which an appellate court upheld a finding of outrageous government conduct, and that was in 1988, when La Plata County law enforcement created a fake criminal case against a fake defendant, charged the fake defendant with fabricated crimes and presented the case as real to a judge so that the fake defendant — an undercover officer — could hire a particular defense attorney and investigate the attorney for drug use.

In that instance, the judge wrote, the integrity of one case was compromised.

“Here, the integrity of one thousand cases in presumably multiple courts has been compromised,” he wrote. “The integrity of the role of forensic evidence in our criminal justice system has been compromised. The manipulation of data in a thousand cases can be described no other way than violating principles of fundamental fairness, that forensic testing is reliable and will guide us to the truth because it has no opinion and cannot lie. Ms. Woods has taught us a hard lesson, that the integrity of a test relies on the integrity of a person.”

Churchill died Tuesday in Atlanta of complications from a stroke, his longtime friend and former attorney David Lane said Wednesday.

Churchill had been a tenured professor at CU’s Boulder campus for more than 15 years and had served as chairman of its ethnic studies department when he was fired in 2007 following a national uproar over an essay he wrote on Sept. 12, 2001, in which he argued the U.S. had provoked the terrorist attacks.

While the Board of Regents said it fired Churchill for academic misconduct, alleging plagiarism and fabrication in his research on Native Americans, Churchill sued the university for wrongful termination, claiming the real cause was to penalize him for the essay.

The piece, titled “Some People Push Back,” referred to some victims in the World Trade Center attacks as “little Eichmanns” who were complicit in the evil of “America’s global financial empire.” The statement references , a Nazi leader who helped orchestrate the Holocaust.

It went largely unnoticed until February 2005, when faculty at Hamilton College in New York came across the writing when Churchill was invited to speak at the campus. His remarks sparked national backlash, debates over free speech protections, calls for his dismissal from then-Gov. Bill Owens and Colorado’s congressional delegation and a that went all the way to the Colorado Supreme Court.

In 2009, a Denver jury found that CU unlawfully terminated Churchill for exercising his right to free speech and awarded him symbolic $1 in damages, but the judge did not order CU to reinstate him as a professor.

The state Court of Appeals and state Supreme Court heard Churchill’s appeals, but both upheld the lower court����ap decision that the man was not entitled to reinstatement or back pay. Churchill then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to take the case.

At the time, Lane, who represented Churchill in the civil trial, said the court’s ruling set a dangerous precedent that the regents are above the law.

“The right wing and the regents tried their best to smear him in the media, but a jury of his peers in Denver District Court saw through it all and found he was fired not because he was a shoddy scholar… But for making controversial remarks about how 9/11 was a rational military response by an oppressed people to American foreign policy,” Lane said Wednesday.

Churchill’s legacy at CU Boulder remains complicated, faculty members said Wednesday.

, a history professor at CU Boulder and proponent of academic freedom, said Churchill had a right to make those “reprehensible” statements in his 2001 essay, but they did spark the investigation into his academic conduct. One could also just as easily ask why an inquiry hadn’t happened earlier, she said.

“I think there was an enormous amount of confusion and strong feeling brought out by having it cast as an issue of academic freedom, but I don’t think it was that,” Limerick said. “I would push to say this was never about academic freedom.”

Academic freedom is important, she said, but it doesn’t protect against plagiarism. Many public officials also moved too quickly in calling for his termination, she said.

“(There’s a lesson) to be careful what you move too quickly to support, and be ready to take in more information and think maybe there’s something here we weren’t paying attention to,” Limerick said.

Christopher Braider was part of a faculty group who protested the university’s actions against Churchill. He objected to the university’s investigation, which he believes was the administration caving to public and political pressure from Colorado and the nation.

There’s no doubt that Churchill did cheat, plagiarize and violate scholarly ethics, Braider said. But the investigation only happened because of Churchill’s protected speech, which Braider believes was wrong.

“The university wanted to fire him, and they found a pretext through this investigation of his scholarly work,” Braider said. “They wouldn’t have investigated his scholarly work without the public outcry, and that����ap what the jury found.”

“The guy may (have been) a stinker, but the university behaved very badly,” Braider continued.

Condemnation of Churchill’s scholarship was not universal — in 2012, the Colorado delegation of the published an extensive report that characterized the allegations against him as “almost entirely false or misleading; the slivers that remain standing are trivial in the extreme, given the volume of Churchill’s work and the high regard in which it is held by other experts in the field.”

Lane described Churchill as a passionate fighter for human rights, especially those of Native Americans and Indigenous people everywhere.

“He was absolutely fearless when it came to standing up for what he believed was right,” Lane said. “He didn’t care who criticized him; he was willing to go to jail for his beliefs. I think he was a very inspirational figure.”

A 2005 investigative report by the Rocky Mountain News also criticized Churchill’s claims that he was Native American. In 2017, he told a he “never claimed (he) was (expletive) Sitting Bull.”

Churchill was born on Oct. 2, 1947, in Urbana, Illinois, to Jack LeRoy Churchill and Maralyn Lucretia Allen.

He was drafted into the U.S. Army at 19 years old and served a 10-month tour in South Vietnam, according to the AAUP. It was an experience Lane said helped shape his political views and advocacy for Indigenous people.

Churchill soon became involved in political activism back home, and went on to earn a master’s degree in cross-cultural communication from the University of Illinois-Springfield.

He briefly taught studio art and art history at Black Hills State College in South Dakota before moving to Colorado, where he started working for CU Boulder in 1978.

He rose through the campus ranks over the next decade, serving as director of the American Indian Educational Opportunity Program and University Learning Center and helping found the center that was a precursor to the university’s Ethnic Studies department, according to the AAUP.

Churchill was hired as an associate professor in 1988 and won multiple campus awards for his political and intellectual work. He accepted a tenured faculty position in 1991, was promoted to full professor in 1997 and became chair of the Ethnic Studies Department in 2002.

Information about his survivors and memorial services was not available Wednesday.

Colorado’s second-largest school district, she said in a , had made “sweeping” violations of , the landmark law passed in 1972 to ensure women and girls can participate in school activities without harassment or discrimination.

Jeffco Public Schools’ offense? The district has policies supporting transgender students — such as allowing them to access bathrooms based on their gender identities — that conflict with the Trump administration’s new interpretation of Title IX.

“The district����ap decision to prioritize ‘gender identity’ over ensuring equal access for its female students is unconscionable,” Richey said at the time.

Yet Title IX attorneys and experts interviewed by The Denver Post disagree with how the Trump administration is applying the law, which they say doesn’t require schools to prohibit transgender athletes from playing on teams that align with their gender identities.

“The way that Title IX is being used currently around this debate is quite overblown and not really proportionate to the actual issues in the country,” said Ashlyn Hare, a Title IX attorney with Hutchinson Black and Cook in Boulder.

The federal government’s new interpretation of Title IX has left Jeffco Public Schools in a bind.

The Education Department’s says that if Jeffco doesn’t comply with an order to change its policies, the district could lose more than $50 million in federal funding for things such as special education programs and school lunches.

Jeffco counters that changing policies would place the school district in violation of , which protects transgender students’ access to facilities based on their gender identities.

So Jeffco Public Schools is taking the matter to court, arguing in a recently filed federal lawsuit that Colorado state law trumps the Education Department����ap new Title IX interpretation.

Attorneys specializing in Title IX agree with the district.

Efforts to ban transgender athletes from girls sports have gained traction under the second Trump administration, which last year rolled back previous guidance that expanded Title IX’s scope to include harassment or exclusion based on sexual orientation and gender identity as a form of discrimination.

The administration strictly defines gender based on the sex a person was assigned at birth and has used the federal government����ap new definition of Title IX — which was — to investigate K-12 districts nationwide that have policies supporting transgender students.

“To follow an executive order that is contrary to state law is to make a decision about policy and politics as opposed to what is… the binding law in your state,” said Scott Lewis, co-founder of the .

At least two Colorado districts — Jeffco and Denver Public Schools — have gotten caught up in the Education Department����ap rollback of Title IX protections for transgender students.

The agency launched one investigation into DPS last year after the district built a gender-neutral bathroom at East High School and a second Title IX probe in July after a teacher was accused of making female students kiss each other in class.

But the Education Department has been more aggressive in pursuing its case against Jeffco Public Schools, spurring the district to sue the agency last month. The 55-page lawsuit details Jeffco’s fight with the Trump administration, from nine months of silence to the allegation that dozens of boys are taking girls’ spots on sports teams.

Losing federal funding would significantly hurt Jeffco Public Schools, which recently slashed $45 million from its budget and cut 139 jobs. The district, which has a nearly $1 billion budget, still had to use $13 million from reserves to balance the budget for the 2026-27 fiscal year, despite those reductions.

“Protecting our inclusive student culture is worth the investment,” said Erin Kenworthy, vice president of Jeffco’s Board of Education. “This fight came to us. We weren’t looking for it.”

An investigation is launched

The Office for Civil Rights first revealed its investigation into the district last year, calling it one of several actions the agency was taking in recognition of

“This administration will fight on every front to protect women’s and girls’ sports, intimate spaces, dormitories and living quarters, and fraternal and panhellenic organizations,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement at the time.

The Office for Civil Rights sent Jeffco Public Schools notice of the investigation on June 2, 2025, and the district responded to the government����ap request a month later. But the district didn’t hear back from the department until earlier this year, when it announced that it had determined Jeffco violated Title IX.

Between June 2025 and March, the Office of Civil Rights did not interview staff or students, nor did the agency send employees to visit the school district as is typical in such investigations, Jeffco’s lawsuit alleged.

“Jeffco did not receive any communication at all from OCR during the investigation,” the district����ap attorneys wrote in the lawsuit.

A spokesperson for the Office for Civil Rights did not respond to an interview request.

The agency concluded Jeffco Public Schools violated Title IX based solely on allegations made by a family that sued the district two years ago, the lawsuit states.

The family alleged the district assigned their 11-year-old daughter the same bed as a transgender girl on a trip in 2023. A federal judge the family’s lawsuit last year.

In Jeffco’s lawsuit, attorneys argued that the Office of Civil Rights can’t assert that the family’s allegations against the district are factual because the office didn’t conduct an investigation.

The Office for Civil Rights also alleged more than 60 male students were competing on girls sports teams at Jeffco Public Schools, an accusation the district denies. The boys, according to Jeffco, are managers, trainers or mascots — not athletes.

The federal agency ordered Jeffco to take three steps to resolve the alleged Title IX violations, including issuing a public statement that the district will comply with the Trump administration’s interpretation of the law and its definition of the words “sex,” “male” and “female”.

The district must also reverse policies supporting transgender students and give bathroom access and sports-team eligibility based on the sex students were assigned at birth, according to the lawsuit.

Third, the district is ordered to review any recognitions, including awards,  given to boys competing on girls sports teams and restore the accolades to any girls excluded because of their presence.

The district’s attorneys argued in the lawsuit that Jeffco Public Schools can’t comply with the federal government����ap orders because it has to follow the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act.

‘Kind of a scare tactic’

An executive order represents the Trump administration’s interpretation of a law — not the law itself, Title IX attorneys who spoke to The Post said.

“An executive order doesn’t really mean anything,” Hare said. “…(It) was kind of a scare tactic.”

This means school systems in states without protections for transgender students can follow the president����ap executive order without any problems, but that����ap not the case in states like Colorado, where there are laws that conflict with the order, Lewis added.

A school district that chooses to follow the executive order over state law is more likely to lose in state court, he said.

Such a case is already making its way through the courts.

District 49 near Colorado Springs has sued state officials, arguing that the state’s Anti-Discrimination Act violates students’ rights by allowing transgender girls to play on teams that match their gender identity.

District 49 after its school board passed a policy banning transgender students from playing on sports teams based on their gender identities, a decision made in the wake of Trump’s executive order.

Hare represented the , which was one of the organizations sued by District 49. The association was dropped from the lawsuit after it agreed not to sanction conservative districts and schools for their policies prohibiting transgender students from playing on girls sports teams.

Courts leave it up to states — so far

Parker Baxter, director of the at the University of Colorado Denver, called Jeffco Public Schools’ argument regarding the state Anti-Discrimination Act “a little bit of a distraction.”

The primary fight, he said, is over whether the executive branch can enforce its interpretation of Title IX when the Department of Education did not undergo the normal rulemaking process, including taking public comment.

States, Baxter said, weren’t given a chance to weigh in on how the change might impact them and their existing laws.

Earlier this year, the , including one in Idaho, that prohibit transgender girls from playing on female sports teams. But the ruling did not address what happens in states with laws that allow transgender students to play on teams that match their gender identities.

“They basically left it to each state,” Lewis said of the ruling. “Colorado does not have to change its law unless it wants to, and it does not seem to be an inclination for that.”

Jeffco Public Schools argues in its lawsuit that a recent ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court backs up the district����ap position. Earlier this year, the court found that must follow the state’s Anti-Discrimination Act and provide gender-affirming care to transgender patients despite the federal government����ap threat to pull funding.

The school district����ap attorneys said the Education Department����ap attempt to force Jeffco to violate state law has “undermined community trust.”

“Jeffco students and staff are uncertain as to what rules will apply to their access to facilities and athletics when school resumes this fall and whether they will have sufficient funding to support their education programs and activities,” the attorneys wrote.

District Court Senior Judge Michael Mullins vacated Deborah Nicholls’ convictions in a written order last weekend, nearly four months after he found that prosecutors wrongly kept secret evidence that cast doubt on Nicholls’ guilt during her original jury trial.

Nicholls was convicted in 2008 of first-degree murder in the deaths of her three children, who died when the family’s house caught fire in the middle of the night on March 7, 2003.

Those convictions were erased Saturday.

“It’s been a long time coming,” Nicholls’ attorney, Janene McCabe, said Thursday.

Nicholls, who now stands accused but not convicted of the crimes, will be transferred to the El Paso County jail, and be considered for release on bail while an appeal from the Fourth Judicial District Attorney’s Office is pending. Prosecutors are challenging the judge’s findings that they violated evidence rules by keeping exculpatory evidence secret.

“This office will continue to fight for justice for the three children who lost their lives in 2003,” Fourth Judicial District Attorney Michael Allen said in a statement. “We will diligently defend the original verdicts, and we are prepared to retry the case, if deemed necessary by the Court of Appeals.”

Nicholls has long maintained her innocence in the fire that killed her children, Jay, 11, Sophia, 5, and Sierra, 3. She began her most recent push to overturn her convictions in 2022, with the backing of the Korey Wise Innocence Project at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Prosecutors argued during the parents’ separate jury trials that Deborah and Tim Nicholls killed their children in an attempt to collect insurance money to fund their methamphetamine addiction. The parents were accused of spreading a highly flammable cleaning fluid around the house — and on their children’s pajamas — and then intentionally setting the home on fire.

Tim Nicholls allegedly confessed the murder plot to another prisoner while awaiting trial, and that man then became an informant and a key witness for the prosecution. Deborah Nicholls was not home when the fire started; her husband escaped the blaze with burns and injuries after jumping out a second-story window.

Prosecutors alleged Deborah Nicholls masterminded the plot while her husband carried it out and set the fire. She has suggested she may have left candles burning unattended in the home. Deborah’s murder convictions were upheld by the Colorado Supreme Court in 2017.

During Deborah Nicholls’ jury trial, prosecutors relied heavily on findings from one Colorado Bureau of Investigation scientist who concluded that chemical testing results were consistent with an accelerant being used in the deadly fire.

But the district attorneys kept secret a second opinion from another CBI scientist who found that the testing did not show the presence of an accelerant. That second scientist also agreed with a defense expert that some testing had been contaminated, Mullins wrote in an April 28 order. The judge found the second opinion undermined the core of the prosecution’s case.

“Disclosure of the suppressed evidence would have enabled the defense to challenge the validity and weight of laboratory findings, potentially precluding their admission or, at a minimum, undermining their credibility,” Mullins wrote in a 20-page order overturning the convictions. “This, in turn, would have weakened the prosecution’s expert testimony regarding the presence of accelerants and diminished the perceived reliability of corroborating witnesses. … As a result, the prosecution’s case would have been destabilized, undermining its overall credibility.”

Prosecutors in Allen’s office argued that the second CBI scientist����ap opinion — provided to the prosecution in the form of notes as they prepared for trial — was work product that did not have to be turned over to the defense under Colorado discovery rules, which govern evidence sharing in criminal cases.

Mullins rejected that argument on the grounds that exculpatory information must always be shared.

On Thursday, McCabe said Nicholls is relieved by the ruling but frustrated by how long it took.

“Her frustration is, why do prosecutors get to do this?” McCabe said. “Why do prosecutors get to hide evidence and have no repercussions against them? It was the crux of the case, whether an accelerant was used to start the fire. And when the DAs had bad evidence that they knew cut against their theory, they just hid it.”

The prosecutors on the original case were Amy Folsom and Jeff Lindsey. Lindsey is now the elected DA in the 11th Judicial District, which was recently sanctioned for discovery violations. He declined to comment Thursday.

Kate Singh, a spokeswoman for Allen, said in a statement that the original prosecution was handled by different people than those who run the office now.

“Since then, the office has experienced significant changes in leadership, personnel, policies, training and technology,” the statement read. “Discovery practices have also evolved substantially, and prosecutors today receive training on the sophisticated technologies and processes required to meet modern discovery obligations.”

The statement reiterated that prosecutors disagree with Mullins’ finding of a discovery violation.

Tim Nicholls’ convictions were not affected by the ruling in Deborah Nicholls’ case, and he remains imprisoned on a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. He is pursuing similar innocence claims, his attorney, Gail Johnson, said Thursday.

“Like his former wife Deb Nicholls, our client Tim Nicholls is innocent of arson and murder,” she said in a statement. “He loved his children, and he suffered significant injuries when he went upstairs in the burning house to try to save them from the tragic accidental house fire. Similar to what happened in Deb’s case, the district attorney’s office hid favorable evidence from Tim’s counsel that contradicts the prosecution theory that the fire was intentionally set.”

Deborah Nicholls is scheduled to return to court Aug. 20. After her bail is decided, the case will be on hold in the district court while the DA’s appeal is pending. The Colorado Court of Appeals could either uphold Mullins’ decision to vacate the convictions or reverse it and reinstate them.

A year after a Denver district judge ruled that Monica Villela’s home never should have been sold to Welcome to Realty LLC in a foreclosure auction, the investor who bought the house now wants the Colorado Supreme Court to intervene. That investor, Christophe Attard, is challenging the lower court’s ruling that the city’s inclusionary housing ordinance trumps a lien placed on the house by a homeowners association or metro district.

Earlier this year, the Colorado Court of Appeals sided with Denver, the plaintiff in the lawsuit, as the city attempts to protect its housing ordinance. The law allows price caps on certain homes to keep them affordable, then restricts who can buy them, based on income.

Welcome to Realty argues that the first two legal rulings could overturn a 48-year-old precedent in Colorado that gives special districts a “super priority lien” over mortgages, and that the city’s housing ordinance should not trump that foreclosure power. That 1978 case — Wasson vs. Hogenson — established the prevailing law in the state.

The appeals court’s decision “presents an epochal shift in how special districts can fund and collect on the assessments owed to them from liens against the properties they serve,” Welcome to Realty’s petition to the Colorado Supreme Court states.

Meanwhile, Villela and her four children are staying with family after being evicted from the Green Valley Ranch home by Attard, stuck in limbo as they await a legal outcome. Villela’s supporters and community activists have raised enough money to buy the home back from Attard, but they say he has declined the offer.

The Special District Association of Colorado filed a brief in support of Welcome to Realty, saying special districts — including those that levy taxes to fund libraries, fire departments and water — rely on fees to provide public services. And liens are a tool for making sure those districts are paid by those who live in them.

“Almost none of the services provided by special districts can happen without significant future planning, and without dependable sources of revenue, that planning is nearly impossible,” the association’s brief argues.

Ann Terry, executive director of the Special District Association of Colorado, said her organization’s interest lies in protecting the priority of liens under Colorado law.

“We’re just in this on a very narrow issue on the priority of the lien,” Terry said. “Local governments have always had a priority on a lien.”

Efforts to reach Attard and his lawyer, Christopher Conant, were unsuccessful.

Melissa Sisneros, a spokeswoman for the Denver City Attorney’s Office, declined to comment on the case but noted, “We will continue to pursue all remedies available to the city to protect its interests.”

Mounting HOA fees and fines

The saga over Villela’s home began in March 2022 when the house on Netherland Place in Green Valley Ranch sold at a foreclosure auction.

Villela’s family had bought their home in 2005. They made regular mortgage payments and kept up with their HOA’s rules and fees. But the family began struggling when Villela and her husband, Gilardo Gonzalez Jr., separated.

Gonzalez continued to pay the mortgage, but Villela, who was living in their house with the couple’s four children, could not keep up with the maintenance required by the Town Center Metro District and the homeowners association.

In Colorado, metro districts are elected boards that levy taxes on developments so builders can use the money for critical infrastructure such as street lights and sidewalks. Those elected boards often work in conjunction with homeowners associations to manage neighborhoods and properties, which is the case in Villela’s neighborhood in far northeast Denver.

Villela’s fines for infractions such as weeds in her yard or a garbage can left on the curb multiplied. Then late fees for unpaid fines stacked up.

Villela said she knew the family was in arrears, but put those expenses on the back burner because of other struggles connected to her and her husband’s separation.

The metro district placed a lien on the house, and a judge ordered it to be sold at a foreclosure auction, which happened in December 2021.

Villela’s family owed more than $20,000 in unpaid fines and fees to the metro district and its lawyers, according to court documents filed in the case. The debt also included $15 per month on unpaid fines and fees as well as annual 8% interest on the debt.

Foreclosure auctions forced by metro districts and homeowners associations cause homeowners to lose thousands of dollars in equity. Villela’s family, for example, bought their house in 2005 for $164,200. It was valued at more than $300,000 when it was sold at the January 2022 auction for $23,524.

Villela said she was not aware the house had been sold until Attard showed up in her driveway in March 2022 with documents showing he had purchased it.

She was floored.

However, the Netherland Place home was bound by Denver’s inclusionary housing ordinance, which sets affordability covenants on some homes. It sets price caps on those homes when they are resold, and it prevents those homes from being sold to investors.

Denver takes matter to court

The city sued Welcome to Realty, Attard’s investment company.

In April 2025, Denver District Judge Mark T. Bailey ruled that Welcome to Realty must sell the house because it does not meet the city’s rules for purchasing homes with affordability covenants.

Bailey’s order also placed an injunction prohibiting Attard from leasing the house and, because affordability covenants eventually expire, the judge demanded the clock reset to account for the three years Welcome to Realty had owned the house.

Villela and her children continued to live in the house, without paying rent but maintaining the mortgage and its upkeep, until last summer when Attard obtained a court order for their eviction. He came to the house while Villela was home, and she begged him to let her family stay until the court case is resolved.

“I was asking for more time and he said, ‘No. No more time,'” Villela said. “It was like a nightmare.”

Villela and her children, ages 15, 17, 19 and 21, now are living with her ex-husband’s parents. There are eight people in the house, and it has been difficult for her teenagers.

“We haven’t been able to find our place,” she said. “Sometimes it’s difficult for the kids to understand why this takes so long.”

Villela’s hands are tied because the court case is between the investor and Denver. She can only wait for the legal dueling to end and then learn the fate of the home.

If the state Supreme Court declines to accept the case, then Welcome to Realty loses its right to own the house and must sell.

The Denver court judge’s ruling said the house must be sold under affordable housing covenants, but it did not specify that Villela should get first rights to buy it. The investor could sell the home to someone else.

Trying to buy back house

Community groups and affordable housing advocates have raised enough money for Villela to buy the house from Attard at the price he paid at auction, plus additional money so that he could turn a small profit, said Kevin Patterson of the , an advocacy group that fights discriminatory housing practices.

They have reached out to Attard with financial offers. He has declined, they said.

Zach Neumann, executive director of the , which provides legal aid to people during a housing crisis, said the best-case scenario for Villela would be the state Supreme Court declining to take the case. He hopes that is the outcome since two courts have already ruled against Welcome to Realty.

If the higher court takes the case, Villela’s home would be in limbo for at least another year because of the time it takes for cases to be adjudicated.

Neumann fears a victory for Welcome to Realty would harm others whose homes fall under Denver’s inclusionary housing ordinance and are subject to foreclosures by metro districts and HOAs.

Meanwhile, the house sits empty in Green Valley Ranch because Attard’s company is not allowed to rent it or sell it, pending the court cases.

“The system feels like gangsters — a criminal mafia — coming after me,” Villela said. “They’re getting richer and richer and displacing my kids from a beautiful home.”

Re: “Trump and Peters declare America’s democracy dead,” July 12 editorial

Your recent piece on Tina Peters read less like measured journalism and more like a coordinated effort to smear a county clerk who dared question the machinery of elections — while a 70-year-old lady spent over 600 days in jail.

It began with the April 6, 2021, Mesa County municipal election. Before official results were tallied at 7 p.m., a candidate received an eerily precise victory call from her campaign manager. Not psychic hotline stuff — just enough to raise eyebrows for the clerk responsible for certifying the results. Tina Peters started asking questions. Suspicion isn’t a crime when your job is ensuring elections are verifiably trustworthy.

She was preserving federal records per her oath (Supremacy Clause). Courts rejected full immunity, but the state-federal tension remains. In 2026, the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld her convictions but threw out the sentence, ruling the judge improperly punished her protected speech. A 9-0 Supreme Court precedent backs this: You can’t crank up penalties simply because someone won’t stop talking. Notably, she was never charged with breaching or destroying records. She was fulfilling preservation duties during the “Trusted Build” update.

Elections thrive on verifiable trust. Questioning the process — especially when oddities appear —shouldn’t turn someone into Public Enemy #1. The Denver Post can keep its narrative, but courts and federal complaints keep revealing real tensions worth honest debate. With transparency and scrutiny, we can strengthen trust in our elections moving forward. Brighter chapters are possible.

Brad Hackman, Lakewood

So Trump declares that mail-in ballots and voting machines are rigged so Democrats can win elections. Why hasn’t anyone confronted Trump that he doesn’t declare the same thing when Republicans win, including himself?!  And do the MAGA people not see the irony in that?!  I wonder if Tina Peters can look herself in the mirror without seeing her nose grow while continuing these lies and atrocities.

Marcia Murphy, Centennial

This is in response to the lengthy, excellent editorial on the almost completely flawless way that CO runs its election. It was very well explained.

But I am still confused as to why everyone seems to ignore the fact that in Mesa County, President Trump won 68% of the vote. How is that not critical to proving that Tina Peters is nothing but a scam artist. What was she looking for? How could that percentage be nothing but nearly total victory for Trump when we now call a 15-point victory a near landslide? She wanted to be MAGA royalty and thanks to our governor, she has now achieved it.

Judith Pettibone, Denver

The editorials published by The Post, while reliably expressing an opinion left of center, can also on occasion, reflect a strategic pragmatism.

Sunday’s offering was no such occasion.

The bloated-font headline, “Trump and Peters declare America’s democracy dead,” reeks of the leering hyperbolic headlines of social media that rarely deliver on their promise but scream anyway. Using the dense and over-the-top Trump post on his Truth Social (that’s so unlike him), re: rigged elections as a jumping-off point, The Post makes an enormous leap of faith in the headline that he declared “democracy dead”, but he did no such thing.

He didn’t then, and as far as a Google search goes, he never has. What he did was chum for outrage by saying voting machines were rigged, and you bit and delivered, big time. His attempts to undermine public confidence in elections are tired and ineffective, even to supporters like myself.

Our democracy will survive, even continue to thrive, despite who occupies the White House.

If, as you asserted, you are “exhausted” with countering these stale and benign accusations, here’s a virtuous piece of advice: stop doing that. And while you’re at it, stop mimicking the trolling websites on social media with desperate headline-hype to attract clicks. It’s beneath you.

Jon Pitt, Golden

It����ap confusing. Just last month, President Trump and many of his media supporters made (unfounded) claims of fraud and predicted the imminent collapse of the electoral system as vote counting in California stretched to days after primary Election Day and his preferred candidate for Los Angeles for mayor fell short of the final ballot. This month, I haven’t heard a peep about the fallibility of vote counting as the GOP primary election stretched to nine days and the more establishment gubernatorial candidate lost her early lead to an outsider. One might infer there was an ulterior motive in claiming fraud in the first place.

Randy Livingston, Denver

Rampant fraud did plague Colorado’s primary election, just not how Trump and Tina Peters might claim. Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s office failed to get its updated election instructions posted clearly on all county election office websites. Consequently, an estimated 75% of voters were not officially informed, in a timely and non-partisan way, how to obtain and vote a Unity Party ballot. Only Republican or Democratic ballots and their instructions were automatically mailed to voters in the June primary.

Additionally, news media such as KUNC, KUSA, and the Colorado Sun, excluded Unity Party candidates from forums or voter guides where “all candidates for the same office” were required to be invited. That had the “effect of favoring…a group of candidates”, namely Democrats and Republicans, in violation of IRS or FCC regulations. So, the election was not “free and fair.” Attorney General Phil Weiser is responsible for enforcing rules to ensure “fair” elections, but he and Marx benefited from an “unfair” election.

Had voters been properly informed, the “fair” election results might have favored Kirkmeyer. That speculation is unknowable. However, claims of election fraud due to misrepresentation or omission of critical acts are easily knowable and provable. They’re neither “outlandish claims” nor “isolated incidents”.

Should Weiser and Griswold be disqualified? Should the election be nullified and run again – legally and fairly? Do violating news outlets need to lose their tax-exempt status or FCC licenses? Colorado’s “gold standard” election integrity is at stake. The primary election needs an unbiased investigation and accountability.

Jeff Peckman, Englewood

Time to re-evaluate the wolf reintroduction

Re: “On the front lines,” July 12 news story

Having read many articles regarding the wolf reintroduction program in Colorado, I am wondering if this program is producing any positive results. It seems that millions of dollars are being spent on hiring 18 range riders, compensating ranchers and farmers for their loss of livestock and herding dogs, as well as the cost of obtaining and tracking wolves.

Now, after so many years since the initial reintroduction program began, have we as taxpayers and interested parties gained any real advantages from this program? It seems to me that the problems encountered have overwhelmed any potential advantages. Also, why doesn’t Colorado Parks and Wildlife conduct a study to evaluate this program? All concerned, taxpayers, supporters, opponents and government officials need to know if this program is worth all the effort that has been put into it.

James Sebben, Minturn

I read with dismay the numerous articles commenting on the hardship ranchers must endure because of the introduction of wolves to Colorado. The default position in all of these articles is that ranchers have more rights than other people, in that they must be compensated for losses due to predation.

It would be useful to augment this point of view by exploring the premise that cattle ranching is a good thing and must be protected. To me, it is the same as dog meat farming, at one time prevalent in Asian countries.  There is fundamentally no difference between farming dogs for meat and raising cattle.  The only cultural difference is that Western cultures revere dogs but consider cattle a meal in waiting.

Just as dog meat farmers are abandoning their former way of making a living and developing new livelihoods, the same can happen to cattle ranchers.  I find their practices equally abhorrent and unworthy of protection.

Claire Moulden, Thornton

No to gerrymandering, but Colorado is a long way from competitive districts

Re: “Colorado Supreme Court just saved us the shame of making a mistake the size of Texas or California,” July 12 opinion column

I agree with Krista Kafer when she says in her Sunday op-ed that Coloradans should leave the process of redistricting to the newly created Independent Congressional Redistricting Commission.

But I don’t agree that their actions thus far have been true to their mission. The wording is clear enough. “The 12-member bipartisan commission is obligated by the state Constitution to maximize the number of competitive districts and may not protect a political party or an incumbent.” But then, as Krista states, “The Commission created four Democratic-majority seats, three Republican-majority seats, and one competitive district.” That����ap right. One competitive district. How is that “maximizing the number of competitive districts?

Colorado’s congressional districts are not competitive. They generally still favor candidates from one party over another. Just look at the data from the 2024 election. While Gabe Evans, a Republican, won Congressional District 8 by just about 2,500 votes and Jeff Hurd, also a Republican, won Congressional District 3 by just about 19,800 votes, the rest of our districts clearly favored one party over another.

Jeff Crank, a Republican, won Congressional District 5 by 50,000 votes. Lauren Boebert, a Republican, won District 4 by 52,000 votes. Brittany Petterson, a Democrat, won District 7 by 60,000 votes. Jason Crow, a Democrat, won District 6 by 70,000 votes. Joe Neguse, a Democrat, won District 2 by 164,000 votes. And the venerable Diana DeGette, a Democrat, won District 1 by 190,000 votes!

Based on the data, the State of Colorado cannot say that it����ap done a good job of making our congressional elections more competitive because they have not. There is a lot more work to do.

Mike Dubrovich, Parker

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