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Tag: Parental Rights

How a Garfield County dispute turned into a court-ordered separation
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Local, Top Stories

How a Garfield County dispute turned into a court-ordered separation

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Heather Fitzke’s story offers a look at how quickly a family dispute can move from home into the courtroom—and how outside involvement, public statements and court filings can reshape parental authority in ways many families may not expect. That side of the case is laid out in Part 2. Heather Fitzke says what happened to her family didn’t start in a courtroom. But that’s where it changed everything. She expected to defend herself, and she also ended up arguing with a judge about pronouns.  That moment came during a seven-hour hearing on Sept. 10 that would change the course of her family. Fitzke said that hearing came after she had already lost custody of her child through a separate guardianship decision. On Sept. 10, the judge ru...
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Colorado’s Ideological Regime Doubles Down
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FAIR Colorado, Approved, Commentary, State

Colorado’s Ideological Regime Doubles Down

By Laureen Boll | Commentary, FAIR Colorado HB26-1322 is a weaponized end-run around the Constitution The Supreme Court’s October 2025 oral arguments in Chiles v. Salazar exposed Colorado’s conversion-therapy ban for what it is: raw viewpoint discrimination dressed up as “child protection.” Conservative justices grilled the state on why a licensed counselor could affirm a minor’s gender identity or homosexuality but face professional ruin for exploring the opposite — neutral talk therapy aligned with a family’s faith or biology. The writing is on the wall, as the majority seems ready to apply strict scrutiny and likely strike down the ban as unconstitutional professional speech regulation. Colorado’s Democrat-majority legislature refuses to accept the likely verdict of ...
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Governed by ideology: Colorado’s silent revolution against top-down overreach
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

Governed by ideology: Colorado’s silent revolution against top-down overreach

By Laureen Boll | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Since late December 2025, we've all been witness to the Iranian people rising in extraordinary defiance against an oppressive regime. Sparked initially by economic collapse but quickly evolving into broad demands for freedom and an end to clerical rule, these nationwide protests have seen millions take to the streets in what many describe as the most intense challenge to the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution. The regime's response has been savage: security forces unleashed massacres, particularly in early January 2026, with credible estimates from human rights groups putting the death toll in the tens of thousands. Iranians have made the ultimate sacrifice in this fight against a religious ideology that no longer aligns with...
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Colorado’s assault on families: TABOR, parental rights and the bills lawmakers killed
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Christian Home Educators of Colorado, Approved, Commentary, State

Colorado’s assault on families: TABOR, parental rights and the bills lawmakers killed

By Colleen Enos | Commentary, Christian Home Educators of Colorado In the United States of America, we cherish our freedoms. We have the freedom to protect our families, to practice our faith, to educate our children, and to live in safe communities. Coloradans want to experience those freedoms in our state, too, not just as an ideal in our country. We want truth, justice, and the American way. The American way of limited government and keeping our own money is at risk with the constant attack against the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR). Homeschool families' ability to educate their own children becomes increasingly difficult as the state of Colorado takes additional resources away from us. SB26-135, State Public K-12 Education Funding, wants to circumvent TABOR restrictions and proposes k...
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Colorado bill would require devices to signal when users are minors
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Colorado bill would require devices to signal when users are minors

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Across the country, lawmakers are trying to figure out how — or whether — government should step in when it comes to kids and the internet. Some proposals focus on social media platforms. Others target app stores. A few states have gone a step further, looking at the devices themselves. Colorado is now testing that approach. The proposal, Senate Bill 26-051, is titled “Age Attestation on Computing Devices.” The idea behind it is fairly straightforward: certain devices would send apps a signal indicating whether the person using them is a minor. Supporters say the goal is to give apps a way to recognize when younger users are trying to sign in. Not everyone who testified during the hearing w...
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Colorado’s ‘multiple personality disorder’: Critics say lawmakers send mixed signals on parental rights
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Christian Home Educators of Colorado, Approved, Commentary, State

Colorado’s ‘multiple personality disorder’: Critics say lawmakers send mixed signals on parental rights

By Colleen Enos | Commentary, Christian Home Educators of Colorado Have you ever met someone who constantly took conflicting stances on issues? They can’t decide who or what they stand for? It’s like they have Multiple Personality Disorder. Well, I have met them and they are our leaders. The Colorado Assembly is having an identity crisis. They can’t decide who they are or what they stand for. On multiple issues during the 2026 legislative session, they contradict themselves.  Take for example the conflicting messages of passing SB26-018, Legal Protections for the Dignity of Minors, through the State Senate but killing HB26-1087, Safeguard Minors from Sex-Altering Interventions, in the House Health and Human Services Committee. The first bill was stripped of its p...
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Supreme Court Sides With Parents In California Gender Identity Secrecy Fight
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The Daily Signal, Approved, National

Supreme Court Sides With Parents In California Gender Identity Secrecy Fight

By Tyler O'Neil | The Daily Signal The Supreme Court Monday vindicated parental rights, upholding an injunction against California’s gender secrecy policy, which mandated that school staff hide a student’s claimed transgender identity from parents unless the student expressly consented to reveal it. “This is a watershed moment for parental rights in America,” Paul Jonna, special counsel at the Thomas More Society, said in a statement responding to the decision Monday. “The Supreme Court has told California and every state in the nation in no uncertain terms: you cannot secretly transition a child behind a parent’s back.” “The court’s landmark reaffirmation of substantive due process, its vindication of religious liberty, and its approval of class-wide re...
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Vermont Drops Requirement To Affirm Gender Identity For Foster License Approval
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Just The News, Approved, National

Vermont Drops Requirement To Affirm Gender Identity For Foster License Approval

By Greg Piper | Just the News Vermont settles two lawsuits before appeals court can strike down policy conditioning foster placements, renewals on affirming gender ideology. "We must ban" removals and transitions against parents' will "immediately," Trump says. Solidly Democratic states are coming to the realization that excluding foster-care applicants based on their refusal to treat children as the opposite sex may not be a wise choice.   Vermont gave up its policy of scrutinizing would-be and current foster parents' religious beliefs for inconsistency with gender ideology to settle two First Amendment lawsuits before the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals could rule, issuing sweeping new guidance last week that protects applicants from violating their conscien...
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Colorado Mom Urges Caution for Parents After Son’s Hormone Treatment
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IW Features, Approved, Local

Colorado Mom Urges Caution for Parents After Son’s Hormone Treatment

By Neeraja Deshpande | IW Features A Colorado mother trusted the medical “experts” when they prescribed her teenage son estrogen. Now she urges parents to reject gender ideology claims outright and reclaim authority from ideologues. But Michael had already fallen deep into the trenches of gender ideology, possibly with the help of his Denver-area school.  Thinking they would “put the brakes on this,” Burns said she and her husband took Michael to a therapist in their network at a Kaiser Permanente clinic. Unfortunately, then unbeknownst to the Burnses, Kaiser Permanente is one of the greatest offenders in the gender ideology space, having spearheaded medical experimentation on gender-confused minors both as an insurer and as a clinical provider of ca...
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Half a million signatures filed for youth medical, girls’ sports and child trafficking measures
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Half a million signatures filed for youth medical, girls’ sports and child trafficking measures

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice More than half a million signatures were gathered and delivered with a single stated aim, placing before Colorado voters a set of measures supporters say are designed to protect children. Protect Kids Colorado (PKC) says it submitted more than 170,000 signatures for Proposition 109, formally titled the “Protect Women and Girls Sports Act.” The filed text would require school-sponsored athletic teams to be expressly designated as male, female or coeducational, and would prohibit male students from participating on teams reserved for “females, women or girls.” For Proposition 110, the group reported more than 164,000 signatures. That measure would prohibit a health-care professional from performing surgery on a minor “for the purpos...
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