By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice
Twenty Coloradans showed up. Zero came to oppose. The resolution died anyway.
By the time the House State, Civic, Military, and Veterans Affairs Committee finished Monday night, HCR 26-1004 was postponed indefinitely after a vote of 8 to 3.
Parents waited hours for their three minutes at the microphone. When it was over, the majority moved on to the next bill.
The resolution was constitutionally modest.
It proposed inserting explicit language into the Colorado Constitution recognizing parents’ right to direct the upbringing, education and care of their children. Sponsors argued throughout the hearing that the amendment would leave existing child abuse and neglect protections intact — the state would still be able to intervene in verified cases, just at a higher legal standard.
It would not have become law on its own.
It would have gone to the voters. Supporters returned to that point again and again.
Inside the room: Before a single witness spoke
Resolution sponsors Bradley and DeGraaf have brought earlier versions in prior sessions. They knew the terrain.
DeGraaf grounded his opening in legal precedent: Pierce v. Society of Sisters, Wisconsin v. Yoder, Troxel v. Granville — a line of Supreme Court decisions consistently affirming that parents hold a fundamental liberty interest in raising their children.
He took on the likeliest objection before anyone could raise it. “Recognizing parental rights does not weaken protections for children. It strengthens them,” he told the committee. “The state has the necessary but limited role to intervene in cases of abuse and neglect with full due process. But absent that high threshold, the presumption must remain with the parents.”
“At its core, this is about preserving the proper balance between family and state,” he said. “When that balance holds, families thrive.”
He ended on a question. “Who should bear primary responsibility for raising the next generation? Families or the state? For the sake of our children and the preservation of liberty itself, the answer must remain with parents.”
Bradley ran through the opposition’s playbook point by point. “This will endanger children. It won’t. The proposal does not eliminate the state’s role in protecting children. It simply requires the government to meet a higher legal standard before overriding a parent.” She didn’t stop there. “Free speech is broad. Religious liberty is broad. That’s the point. Rights are meant to endure, not be narrowly written so they can be worked around.”
Then the witnesses came.
Adriana Cuva argued the constitutional framing wasn’t redundant — it was necessary precisely because ambiguity enables erosion. “Opposition to this resolution typically doesn’t argue that parents lack rights. Instead it relies on ambiguity because ambiguity allows shifting interpretations, inconsistent applications across courts, and at times the quiet erosion of parental authority without clear accountability.”
Colleen Enos, representing Christian Home Educators of Colorado, pointed to a more recent legal development the other witnesses hadn’t raised.
The Supreme Court’s Mirabelli v. Bonta decision, she said, affirms that parents’ due process and religious liberty rights must be protected — including the right not to be shut out of decisions about their children’s mental health. Colorado, she argued, doesn’t recognize that standard. “In the state of Colorado, it is increasingly obvious to parents like me that lawmakers want to take our place. In the schools, Colorado is hiding information from parents. In medical decisions, children are being transitioned and making health decisions without their parents’ knowledge.”
She called the ballot measure necessary precisely because of that gap between what federal courts have affirmed and what Colorado currently recognizes.
Becky Pesce, a Jefferson County resident, framed the moment in terms of institutional trust. “The reason this resolution is before you today, again, is because constituents have continued to make their legislators aware that this General Assembly has lost the trust of a rapidly growing body of parents.” She pointed to declining Jefferson County school enrollment, calling it evidence that parents aren’t simply complaining. They’re leaving.
One family’s story: A Supreme Court lawsuit
No one in the room had a greater personal stake than Erin Lee. She told the committee it was her third time testifying on this same resolution and approximately her hundredth appearance at the Capitol on related issues.
In 2021, Lee’s daughter was in sixth grade. Through a gender and sexuality club at school, she had been “sexualized and secretly transitioned into a boy” — and coached to keep it secret from her parents. Lee didn’t find out from the school. She found out from public records she had to file for herself.
The documents she obtained showed the district had characterized parents like her as “guilty until proven innocent.”
Within a week, a mandated reporter appeared at her home on behalf of Child Protective Services, alleging that Lee’s refusal to affirm her daughter’s gender identity constituted abuse.
She filed a federal lawsuit. Lee v. Poudre reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to take the case in October 2025. In a statement respecting the denial of certiorari — joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch — Justice Alito wrote that the allegations in the case were “troubling—and tragic” and underscored the “great and growing national importance” of the parental rights question. In her testimony before the committee, Lee described Alito’s statement as calling her family’s experience “troubling, tragic and an issue of growing national importance.”
Lee asked the committee, “Can you just put yourself in my shoes for a minute? Would you want a school doing psychosocial medical interventions on your child and encouraging them to keep secrecy from you?”
She has since helped more than a dozen families work through versions of the same situation. Several of those parents lost custody of their children for one reason: they said no to medical gender interventions.
Rep. Luck asked her whether her experience was isolated. Lee cited the subsequent wave of lawsuits filed across the country — dozens filed nationally, four already at the Supreme Court level — and named several Colorado parents who had gone public after losing custody rights.
The committee did not ask follow-up questions.
Eight votes, no questions
When the testimony phase closed, the committee’s Democratic members offered their explanations.
Espenoza said the constitution didn’t need to do what the courts had already done. “I would not at this time believe that implementing it in the Constitution does more than what the case law already has done.”
Nguyen thanked those who had come to testify. He said he appreciated “your preferences, your stories, speaking your truth,” then told the sponsors he’d vote no. “I just don’t see the urgency of having a constitutional amendment in the rights of parents. Because right now, I believe that parents are able to still take their children to homeschool.”
With a final count of 8 to 3, the resolution was postponed indefinitely.
Bradley’s closing wasn’t a concession. “I didn’t see a single one of you, other than the two on the ends, basically ask questions — which I’ll have to say on the record bothers me. I ask questions for every bill that comes in front of this committee, no matter what I think my outcome might be. I ask the questions so I can understand the policy better.” She suggested the absence of any opposition testimony might reflect how broadly accepted the underlying principle is — or something else entirely. “A broader concern that outcomes here are often decided before testimony is even given.”
Rep. Bottoms did not soften his closing. “How many hundreds of people have to come into this building and testify about this with legal case law after legal case law before somebody says, oh, okay, maybe this is an issue? These children do not belong to this state.”
Not a bill, and not the end
HCR 26-1004 was not a bill. It carried no binding law and proposed no immediate policy change on its own. It was a concurrent resolution — a mechanism that, if passed by both chambers, would have placed a single constitutional question on the Colorado ballot and let voters decide directly whether parental rights belong explicitly in the state’s founding document.
Tuesday, Erin Lee posted to social media: “LAST NIGHT: 8 Colorado Democrat legislators voted NO on protecting parental rights. 20 citizens showed up to support HCR26-1004 — ZERO opposed. We shared our stories, gave real examples, and begged them to just let us vote to protect parental rights. They didn’t ask one question. Instead they gaslit us & then killed the bill upon arrival.”
The committee’s no vote on Monday didn’t block a law. It blocked an election.
Twenty Coloradans waited through hours of other testimony to make that case, and not one citizen came to argue against them. The sponsors have said they will keep bringing it back.
What isn’t clear is whether Colorado voters will ever be given the opportunity to answer the question themselves — or whether that decision will continue to be made for them in committee.
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