Colorado ‘Children First Act’ (SB 241)

SB 241 would allow a person that advertises, provides, or facilitates adoption or foster care, to refuse to provide such services due to a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction.

The bill would prohibit the state from taking any discriminatory action against a person who refuses to provide social services to or on behalf of children, due to religious or moral beliefs. Social services for children include:

• assisting abused or neglected children;
• teaching children and parents occupational homemaking, and other domestic skills;
• promoting foster parenting;
• providing foster homes, residential care, group homes, or temporary group shelters for children;
• recruiting foster parents;
• placing children in foster homes;
• licensing foster homes;
• promoting adoption or recruiting adoptive parents;
• assisting adoption or supporting adoptive families;
• performing or assisting home studies;
• assisting kinship guardianships or kinship caregivers;
• providing family preservation services;
• providing family support services; and
• providing temporary family reunification services.

---

If passed, the bill would allow child welfare providers the right to discriminate in, or refuse, the services they offer (such as child placement, counseling, and abuse assistance) to LGBTQ families and children.

---

The bill would allow a violation of this provision to be raised as a claim against the government and as a defense in lawsuits between private citizens.

The bill would also prohibit the state from taking any discriminatory action against a person who the state grants custody of a foster or adoptive child, or who seeks such custody from the state, wholly or partially on the basis that the person raises the child, or intends to raise the child, based upon a manner consistent with a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction.

---

People