Republicans in the Colorado Senate on Wednesday blocked the legislature from asking voters to amend the state constitution to let victims of child sex abuse from decades past sue their abusers even if the statute of limitations has run out.
Senate Concurrent Resolution 1, which would have sent the question to the November ballot, needed a supermajority of support to pass the chamber. It failed by a single vote.
Democrats hold a 23-12 advantage in the Senate, one vote shy of a supermajority. Democrats were united in favor of the resolution. No Republicans would join them, citing concerns about the constitutionality of the measure and how it could bankrupt institutions like churches and school districts.
Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeen, R-Monument, said Tuesday in a speech on the Senate floor he couldn’t vote for the resolution.
“I do not take this vote lightly,” he said. “In some ways it’s the hardest vote of my legislative career. My heart breaks for those who were so wrongly and horribly injured. And my vote is cast in defense of the constitution and legal principles each and every one of us, and future generations as well, rely on in protection of our civil society.”
Republicans wanted to amend the resolution to let victims only sue their abusers and not the institutions that may have allowed the abuse to happen.
Democrats argued that voting in favor of the resolution should be easy.
“Why are we wanting to limit justice for someone who was abused as a child?” asked Sen. Rhonda Fields, an Aurora Democrat and a main sponsor of the resolution
The resolution was brought this year in response to a Colorado Supreme Court decision in June striking down a provision in a bipartisan 2021 law that gave victims of child sex assault dating back to the 1960s for whom the statute of limitations had run out a three-year window to sue their abusers and the institutions that allowed their abuse.
The court ruled the law, Senate Bill 88, violated a provision in the constitution prohibiting the General Assembly from reviving a claim for which the statute of limitations has run out.
The statute of limitations used to give child sex abuse survivors in Colorado six years after they turned 18 to file legal action. Most child sex abuse survivors wait decades before revealing their abuse.
The Colorado Sun in 2020 profiled a man who waited until he was 45 to reveal that he had been abused as a child by a priest who was a constant figure in their lives. “When I look back, the reason I didn’t say anything is because I didn’t want to hurt my family,” the man, Neil Elms, said.
(The six-year limitation was repealed in 2021 through the passage of Senate Bill 73, a second measure, but the change only applied to current and future cases.)
Senate Concurrent Resolution 1 was aimed at overcoming that constitutional hurdle. And proponents of the measure introduced it with the expectation that the Republicans in the Capitol who backed Senate Bill 88 would vote for the resolution. Senate Bill 88 passed the Senate 33-3.
It quickly became clear that wouldn’t happen, and Senate Concurrent Resolution 1 languished in the chamber for months as one of its main sponsors, Sen. Jessie Danielson, a Wheat Ridge Democrat, tried to secure a Republican vote.
The resolution was brought up for debate this week even though it remained unclear if it had enough support to pass.
Danielson told The Colorado Sun earlier this month that she was committed to bringing the resolution up for a vote in the Senate before the end of session May 8.
“I’m putting them on the record,” she said of the Republicans who have refused to back the measure. “They’re going to vote.”
In asking Republicans Wednesday to vote for the resolution, she warned them about consequences if they didn’t.
“This is a legacy defining moment,” she said in an impassioned speech on the chamber’s floor. “And although you may like to determine how this vote will be perceived, you cannot. The public gets to decide how this vote will be perceived.”
Democrats hold a supermajority in the House, and Danielson said the resolution should have been able to easily clear that chamber if she had been able to get it out of the Senate.
Ballot measures changing the state constitution require the support of 55% of voters to pass.