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Just days after Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed a bill that classifies using a person’s given name or actual gender in place of their preferred name or gender as discrimination, several local and national groups have filed a lawsuit to stop the law and protect free speech.
The lawsuit claims that House Bill 25-1312, also known as the Kelly Loving Act, violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments, according to local CBS affiliate KKTV. The act considers it discrimination to use a transgender-identifying person’s actual gender or given name, forces educators to be “inclusive of all reasons that a student might adopt a chosen name that differs from the student’s legal name, ” and opens up all variations of dress codes to all students.
According to Colorado News Online, it also makes it easier for “transgender” individuals to change their names or registered gender on birth certificates, drivers licenses, and marriage documents. As CatholicVote previously reported, “misgendering” or using a child’s given name could be also considered child abuse.
National organizations Defending Education and Do No Harm and local organizations Colorado Parent Advocacy Network and Protect Kids Colorado filed the lawsuit against the act in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado.
“The purpose of H.B. 25-1312 is clear,” attorneys for the organizations stated in the lawsuit, according to records KKTV obtained. “The law punishes those who refuse to speak using chosen names and pronouns, and it does so in order to suppress traditional beliefs about sex and gender. In other words, the law openly discriminates based on viewpoint.”
The groups argue that the act violates free speech and uses terminology that leaves it unclear what will be considered discrimination.
“They [the groups] want to refer to transgender-identifying individuals using biological pronouns, birth names, and other forms of address inconsistent with an individual’s self-professed gender identity or gender expression,” the lawsuit states. “But the ‘chosen name’ and ‘gender expression’ provisions make their speech unlawful and unconstitutionally compel them to alter their speech.”
According to Chalkbeat Colorado, an education newspaper, the lawsuit follows on the heels of another filed May 9 by a conservative-leaning school district against the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act. The district argued that the law, which forces sports teams that only involve one gender to permit “transgender” students of the opposite sex to play, is unconstitutional.
