An opinion from the General Assembly’s nonpartisan, in-house counsel indicated that Senate Bill 188, a bill titled “Protections for Accessing Reproductive Health Care,” may violate the state’s single-subject rule.

House Republicans released the opinion from Office of Legislative Legal Services, obtained on Thursday, on the measure dealing with what supporters describe as reproductive and gender-affirming care.  

But the bill’s Democratic House sponsors call it little more than a drafting error, one they intend to address through an amendment when the bill comes up for debate on Friday.

The opinion responds to a question if the bill is attempting to “marry the term gender-affirming care with or under the auspices of ‘legally protected health care’ or as part of ‘reproductive health care.'”

If it is the latter, does it fit under the single-subject title?

The opinion said, “You are correct that reproductive health care as defined in the bill does not include gender-affirming health care and since the title is concerning reproductive health care, it would not include gender-affirming health care.”

The opinion appears to suggest an alternative: “The definition of a legally protected health-care activity includes both reproductive health care and gender-affirming health-care.”‘

The single-subject law, as it applies to legislative bills, dates back to the 1876 state Constitution in Article V, section 21.

“No bill, except general appropriation bills, shall be passed containing more than one subject, which shall be clearly expressed in its title,” the law says.

Bills with more than one subject are void, and the issue has been litigated in Colorado courts dozens of times, most recently in 2005, in a lawsuit filed against the state Department of Corrections over the construction of CSP II and the University of Colorado Board of Regents over lease-purchase agreements tied to the construction of academic facilities at the Anschutz medical campus. 

Assistant House Minority Leader Rose Pugliese, R-Colorado Springs, said the question came up several weeks ago as lawmakers were reviewing the bill and whether it met the constitutional requirement for a single-subject title. 

“We got confirmation that it does not meet single-subject requirement,” she said.

What that means, she said, is that majority Democrats have introduced a bill that violates the Constitution.

“We think this process is moving too fast, we’re not having good debates,” she said.

Minority Leader Mike Lynch, R-Wellington, said this is another example of why invoking House Rule 14 “is dangerous, to the Constitution and to the balance of the process going forward.”

Not catching these kinds of errors, Lynch said, is an indication that the majority is taking advantage of its ability to push through a progressive agenda, and “another reason why we think limiting debate on Rule 14 is not good governance.”

“We all take the position that, if the majority would speak to us, talk to us and include us in their conversations, that these kinds of things would be avoided,” added House GOP Deputy Chief of Staff Roger Hudson. 

Rule 14 is the House rule that majority Democrats invoked last weekend to limit debate on a trio of gun violence prevention bills. The rule states that, upon majority vote, a debate on a bill would be limited to one hour. However, Democrats have been a little less prescriptive around the time limits. For one of the gun bills on Sunday, they allowed for four hours of debate. For the abortion bills, which lawmakers debated in the House Thursday and Friday, they’ve limited the time to eight hours.

But the bill’s Democratic sponsors do not appear to be concerned about the legal opinion.

Rep. Meg Froelich, D-Englewood, called the problem no more than a drafting error, and said Democrats will offer an amendment when the bill comes up on Friday to fix the problem.

While she did not reveal what that amendment will look like, she rejected the idea that the amendment would strip out gender-affirming care from the bill. 

“We’re not amending anything out,” Froelich said. “We just have to add some language so that the definition conforms … It’s amendable.”

Co-sponsor Rep. Brianna Titone, D-Arvada, pointed out the bill has already gone through the Senate without folks realizing there is an error.

“We’ll change the bill to align with the title,” she said.

Sen. Julie Gonzales, D-Denver, the bill’s prime Senate co-sponsor, told Colorado Politics she was unaware of the legal opinion but knew about the amendment that will be introduced on Friday. “I’m very excited about the policy, and we are working to define legally-protected health care in the state of Colorado, which is a definition that would be inclusive of both gender-affirming care and reproductive health care.”