The tens of thousands of domestic workers in Colorado could soon be protected by the state’s anti-employment discrimination law under a newly proposed bill.

If enacted, House Bill 1367 would expand the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act to cover domestic workers. The bill would also extend the time to file a claim with the Civil Rights Commission from 180 to 300 days and increase the damages that can be recovered in age discrimination cases.

“The standards that we have right now do not adequately protect our workers. This is going to solve many problems,” said bill sponsor Rep. Matt Gray, D-Broomfield. “This is not a silver bullet for workplace discrimination … but there’s a lot of people whose lives are going to be made better.”

The House Judiciary Committee advanced the bill Tuesday, sending it to the House Appropriations Committee for further consideration.

The Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act makes it illegal for employers to discriminate against an employee for disability, race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, age and nationality. Under current law, employees do not include domestic workers who work for private households, such as cleaners, gardeners, nannies or elderly care takers.

In 2020, 2.2 million people worked as domestic workers in the U.S. – 91.5% of whom were women and 52.4% of whom were people of color, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute. Domestic workers are also disproportionately older, foreign-born and living in poverty.

Iris Halpern with the Colorado Women’s Bar Association said the historical decision not to include domestic workers in employment protections was intended to exclude industries where recently emancipated enslaved people worked in at the beginning of the Jim Crow Era.

“There’s a really racist history to these exclusions,” Halpern said. “Domestic workers who are doing important work and are disproportionately women and women of color (should) have the same protections under law for the work that they do as other workers.”

On Tuesday, the committee approved the bill in a 7-4 vote, with all Republican members in opposition and all Democrat members in support.

During the meeting, Republican Reps. Stephanie Luck of Penrose and Terri Carver of Colorado Springs repeatedly raised concerns that the bill would prevent people from choosing the gender of their employees for jobs, such as babysitters or elderly care takes.

The bill drafters and others who testified said this would not happen, saying sex in some cases is a bona fide occupational qualification already protected by state statue and existing case law.

“When it’s a very intimate activity like that, there’s not going to be an issue with that,” said Ellen Buckley with the Colorado Plaintiff Employment Lawyers Association. “Absolutely not. That’s not going to be considered discrimination.”

Buckley said the bill would protect domestic workers from pay discrimination based on all protected statuses, but protection for hiring in general would mostly be limited to statuses, such as race and nationality, not age and sex.

If the bill were enacted, the state estimates it would result in around 200 additional discrimination complaints filed each year.