The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down a new law that created a three-year window for people to sue over decades-old childhood sexual abuse on the grounds that the law violated the state constitution.
The Child Sexual Abuse Accountability Act violated the Colorado Constitution’s prohibition on retrospective legislation, the justices ruled in a unanimous opinion Tuesday. The decision will end the recent influx of look-back lawsuits that survivors of childhood sexual abuse brought in the 18 months since the new law took effect.
“I think for my clients, it probably hasn’t set in yet,” said James Avery, an attorney representing seven people who brought claims under the law. “But it’s going to be devastating, like a death in the family. There was already a sense of hopelessness that was there, then the legislature gave them hope, and now the Supreme Court took it away.”
The law, which took effect Jan. 1, 2022, allowed for adults who were sexually assaulted as children to bring lawsuits against both their alleged assailants and, in some cases, organizations that ran youth programs. The law opened a three-year window for such lawsuits for abuse that allegedly happened between 1960 and 2022, including claims that otherwise would have been barred by the statute of limitations.
But the Colorado Supreme Court found Tuesday that the measure violates a provision in the state constitution that forbids lawmakers from passing any legislation that is “retrospective in its operation.”
Lawmakers anticipated such a challenge when they passed the law, and told the justices in court filings that they attempted to write the law in such a way that it did not violate the Colorado Constitution.
Attorneys argued the law was constitutional because the constitution’s prohibition on retrospective legislation was meant to protect only individuals’ rights, not the rights of the government or a school district, and argued that there was an overriding public interest in allowing victims of childhood sexual abuse to seek civil remedies.
The justices rejected their arguments in the 40-page opinion released Tuesday.
“If the constitutional proscription… were required to yield to the policy preferences of the legislature, there would be no proscription at all; the legislature could make any retrospective law constitutional simply by proclaiming that the law serves a legitimate government interest,” Justice Monica Márquez wrote. “Such a back-end rational basis balancing of an otherwise unconstitutional law against the public interest would render the retrospectivity clause meaningless. This cannot be.”
State Sen. Rhonda Fields, D-Aurora, who was a bill sponsor, said Tuesday that the justices’ decision harms abuse survivors.
“I’m really taken aback by this whole thing,” Fields said. “…Our criminal justice system, the highest court we have in the state, is giving the opinion that survivors can’t have their day in court. This moment of healing — it’s not there anymore.”
Another bill sponsor, state Sen. Jessie Danielson, D-Wheat Ridge, said Tuesday that she and other lawmakers “carefully crafted the law to meet constitutional concerns” and that she was disappointed by the ruling.
“I am grieving today on behalf of brave survivors,” she said. “I have no doubt abusers and complicit institutions are celebrating their victory today.”
The case came before the justices when Aurora Public Schools challenged the law after a woman filed a lawsuit against the school district in which she claimed she was repeatedly sexually abused between 2001 and 2005 by a basketball and softball coach at Rangeview High School. The woman was 14 when the abuse began, she claimed in the civil case.
“We certainly understand the General Assembly’s desire to right the wrongs of past decades by permitting such victims to hold abusers and their enablers accountable,” Márquez wrote in the ruling. “But the General Assembly may accomplish its ends only through constitutional means.”
Victims of childhood abuse who brought lawsuits under the new law likely will not see their claims go forward, said Christopher Jackson, an appellate lawyer at Holland and Hart who was not involved in the Colorado Supreme Court case but reviewed the opinion. The ruling means that the law no longer applies, even to ongoing lawsuits.
“They’re stuck where they were before,” he said. “…If a plaintiff can put forward a good reason to say, ‘Even under the old law, we had an argument as to why we could bring this claim today,’ then you could settle or figure things out from there. But if they were relying entirely on this new law, they’re not going to have a lot of options.”
It was not immediately clear Tuesday how many lawsuits were filed under the new law.
Avery, the attorney who is representing several survivors, said most cases brought under the new law will now be tossed out. He added that several other states have opened up similar look-back windows, and those laws have not been struck down.
“I think it’s sad that Colorado is such a conservative outlier jurisdiction,” he said. “Most of our clients are recognizing that people around the country are getting remedies, and here in Colorado we are not. We’re not on the same footing as all the other states that have considered the issue. And I think that makes it double tough.”
Lawmakers should pursue additional legislation or a constitutional amendment to allow for such claims in the future, he said.
Fields said she plans to look into options for additional legislation that would offer similar civil remedies that do comply with the state constitution.
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