Free Republic

In a landmark decision earlier this month, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit delivered a scathing rebuke to the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine, declaring its COVID-19 vaccine mandate unconstitutional.The 55-page ruling highlighted that the mandate, which excluded religious exemptions, was tainted by “religious animus” and thus violated the First Amendment’s protection of religious liberties.The court’s decision reversed a prior ruling by a lower court, bringing to an end a contentious legal battle initiated by the Thomas More Society on behalf of 17 faculty members and students. These individuals had faced severe repercussions, including...

Officials in South Dakota and Colorado certified proposed amendments that would enshrine the right to abortion in their state constitutions. Republican South Dakota Secretary of State Monae Johnson released a statement on Thursday announcing that her office had approved the abortion measure after certifying that it had the required number of signatures to appear on the November ballot, NBC News reported.

A Colorado university’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate violates the U.S. Constitution, a federal court has ruled. The Sept. 1, 2021, mandate “clearly violates the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause as interpreted by our precedents,” a majority of a U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit said in the May 7 decision. While the mandate was later updated, the newer version also violates the Constitution, the judges said. The University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in 2021 required COVID-19 vaccination of all students and employees. It initially offered religious exemptions to anyone who checked a box, but later said...

The state's election office on Monday began proceedings against an advocate for wolves in Colorado over allegations of illegally lobbying during the 2024 session at the state Capitol. ... The complaints, filed in March by John Williams, who operates Colorado Wolf Tracker, claimed Stephen Capra and his organization, Bold Visions Conservation, lobbied multiple legislators on behalf of a paying client, all without registering and without disclosing the client’s identity as required by law. The Elections Division of the Secretary of State launched the proceedings against Capra ... The bill Capra was lobbying on was House Bill 1375, which was sponsored...

Denver is a sanctuary city. Last month Mayor Mike Johnson announced he was cutting $45M from city agency budgets to pay for the influx of over 40,000 illegal aliens into the city. Of the budget cuts, $8.4M is being taken from the Denver Police Department. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has been targeting Denver by sending illegal aliens to the sanctuary city. Why not? Sanctuary cities said they would welcome anyone, regardless of legal status. Abbott is giving them what they asked for with the added bonus of spotlighting the burden on Texas and other border states created by Biden's border...

DENVER (KDVR) — Each year, U.S. News and World Report releases a report ranking each state on several factors. In the most recent report, Colorado made a top 10 list — for most dangerous states. On Thursday, U.S. News and World Report released the “10 Most Dangerous States in America” list. Each of the 50 states was judged on violent crimes and property crime rates. Colorado was recognized as the third most dangerous state, largely in part because of its property crime rate. The report pulled violent and property crime numbers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Crime Data Explorer....

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) — A Colorado woman’s attempt to steal a pickup truck — shortly after she was released from jail on a car theft charge — was thwarted not by officers, nor the truck’s owners, but by her inability to drive a stick shift, Boulder Police said. The woman had been released from jail on May 3 after being accused of stealing a car a day earlier, and walked down the road until she spotted a pickup truck with the keys inside. She then started the pickup, but apparently discovered she couldn’t manage the manual transmission, so she got...

'These heroes were callously tossed aside'.. Multiple times already Colorado, led by homosexual Democrat Gov. Jared Polis, has been cited for its "hostility" to Christianity. It happened in the state's attack on the faith of specialty baker Jack Phillips. Then the same issue arose in a fight involving state censorship of a web designer... Both times the state got slapped hard by the U.S. Supreme Court. Now it's another court, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and a division of the state, the University of Colorado, That court now has ruled that CU's Anshutz School of Medicine's policies that...

A weekend spring storm that drenched the San Francisco Bay area and closed Northern California mountain highways also set a single-day snowfall record for the season on Sunday in the Sierra Nevada. The wet weather system had mostly moved out of the state by Sunday morning, but officials warned that roads would remain slick after around two feet (60 centimeters) of snow fell in some areas of the Sierra. “Did anyone have the snowiest day of the 2023/2024 season being in May on their winter bingo card?” the University of California, Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab asked on the social...

State leadership and delegation chairs from several Libertarian Party chapters, including those in Florida, California, Colorado, Tennessee, Minnesota, Vermont, Nebraska, and the District of Columbia, have extended an invitation to independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr., urging him to seek the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination. The letter, published on Friday by Libertarians for Kennedy and signed by various party leaders, including an alternative region representative on the Libertarian National Committee, urges Kennedy to seek the presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party, with the understanding that the undersigned would consider voting for him in the first round if he accepts. Notably, the...

In the sanctuary city of Denver, Colorado, Mayor Mike Johnson (D) announced that "we will provide a long-term, sustainable response to address the migrant crisis. This program will offer six months of free housing, food assistance, workforce training and more to the migrants currently in the city's shelter system as they wait for federal authorization to work." Housing advocacy group Housekeys Action Network Denver (HAND) slammed Johnston, calling the City's efforts "inadequate." Willy Bastidas, a migrant, said "I think that it's insufficient. The mayor doesn't adequately represent immigrants' interests. He needs to listen to us and work with us toward...

A transgender sex offender has been arrested for attempting to kidnap a young boy during recess at his elementary school. Solomon Galligan, 33, was caught on camera walking onto a field at Black Forest Hills Elementary School in Aurora, Colorado around 2:20 pm, according to an affidavit from the Aurora Police. In the surveillance footage, Galligan is seen walking up to the children in the field before running away from him after he tried grabbing them, according to the affidavit. When Galligan stumbled over a white blanket he was carrying, the child managed to escape. As per the affidavit, he...

A Colorado man is in jail after attempting to kidnap a boy at Black Forest Hills Elementary School in Aurora, police say. video at site.

Migrants and an advocacy group in Denver decried the city's new Asylum Seekers Program that offers six months of free housing, calling it "insufficient" and "offensive" despite the mayor cutting the city's emergency budget to accommodate the migrant surge.

(Colorado Newsline) Colorado landlords will now need a specific reason to evict or not offer a lease renewal to a tenant under a new law signed by Democratic Governor Jared Polis on Friday. It is a victory for tenants-rights organizers and progressive legislators who seek to include renters in the conversation about how to address the state’s housing and affordability issues. Colorado is the sixth state to enact such a policy. “Everybody here wants to prevent unnecessary evictions and save families money. And House Bill 1098 does these things while placing no financial burdens on landlords. This is the right...

On April 17 and 18, Colorado Parks and Wildlife received reports of livestock depredation by wolves in Grand County. The agency confirmed that four cattle were killed... Four yearling cattle have been killed by a wolf or wolves in Grand County. Colorado Parks and Wildlife believes the depredation occurred between Monday night and Tuesday morning. In an email to Sky-Hi News, Parks and Wildlife officials stated that they responded to a possible livestock depredation incident on Wednesday morning and then again on Thursday morning. Both incidents occurred on the same property. On Wednesday, the agency investigated three yearling cattle that...

A housing advocacy group is slamming Denver’s new Asylum Seekers Program as “insufficient” and “a slap in the face,” even staging a protest to voice their disapproval — as the city spends tens of millions of dollars on migrant aid and slashes its emergency services budget to stave off insolvency in the wake of the influx. The surge of new arrivals has thrown the Mile High City’s city’s budget into a tailspin. More than 40,000 migrants have found their way to Denver since December 2022 — more per capita than any other US city — at a total cost of...

DENVER — Gov. Jared Polis signed a bill into law Monday that officially eliminates most restrictions on how many unrelated roommates can live together in Colorado. House Bill 1007 prohibits local governments from enacting occupancy limits, which Polis and other critics of the policy have derided as discriminatory and outdated. Roughly two dozen Colorado cities have such restrictions on the books, though lawmakers said that only a few — including the college town of Fort Collins — actively enforce them. “This issue is both a housing issue and a civil rights issue,” Polis said during a bill-signing ceremony outside the...

Colorado House Democrats passed “assault weapons” ban legislation Sunday to prohibit the sale of AR-15s and certain 9mm pistols. On March 20, 2024, Breitbart News reported that the legislation, HB24-1292, bans 9mm pistols that have threaded barrels and accept a detachable magazine. Moreover, the text of HB24-1292 makes clear that a semiautomatic handgun of any caliber would be banned if it takes a detachable magazine and has a threaded barrel.

Denver intends to defund its police force and fire department in order to better support those illegally entering the U.S. through a program that provides a monthly debit card based on family size, free housing, “access to language instruction, career pathway explorations, industry-recognized credential training, and work-based learning opportunities.”