Today is April 2, 2024, and here’s what you need to know:

The Colorado House on Monday approved the state’s $40.6 billion budget for the next fiscal year on a more or less party-line vote.

The 48-16 vote reflected just one “yes” from Republicans – from the GOP caucus’ Joint Budget Committee member, Rep. Rick Taggart of Grand Junction. Taggart helped to draft the next spending plan contained in House Bill 1430.

Another Republican representative was absent.

First-time candidate Trisha Calvarese won the Democratic nomination for Colorado’s special election to replace former Republican U.S. Rep. Ken Buck on Monday in an online convention.

She’ll face Republican nominee Greg Lopez, a former Parker mayor and two-time gubernatorial candidate, in the June 25 election, triggered last month when Buck abruptly resigned from the 4th Congressional District seat he’s held since 2009.

The special election to fill the remainder of Buck’s term – only the second such election in Colorado history – will take place simultaneously with the state’s primary to pick the parties’ nominees for the November election.

Nine months after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision and nearly eight years after she first filed suit in Colorado’s federal trial court, web designer Lorie Smith received an injunction prohibiting the state from compelling her to create wedding websites for same-sex couples.

In a March 26 order, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Philip A. Brimmer rejected language that would have permitted Smith to more broadly decline service based on her beliefs, but also rebuffed overly specific language proposed by the state.

Based on the litigation history of the case and the type of relief Smith asked for, Brimmer barred Colorado from requiring Smith and her company, 303 Creative, “to create custom websites celebrating or depicting same-sex weddings or otherwise expressing messages inconsistent with Ms. Smith’s beliefs concerning same-sex marriage.”

Neither the state nor the City of Northglenn wants to budge in a tug of war over plans for a facility that would house dozens of registered sex offenders and mentally ill residents in a neighborhood near schools and a playground.

The Mental Health Transitional Living Home – the subject of the tug of war – is comprised of two adjacent buildings at 11255 and 11275 Grant Drive in Northglenn that can house 32 patients.

Northglenn city leaders maintain that the neighborhood, which is packed with families, is not the right place for such a facility. The state counters that the program is necessary for Colorado’s crowded mental health hospitals.

Colorado’s second-highest court agreed last week that an Arapahoe County judge properly held a criminal defendant in contempt for breaking his own cell phone to avoid handing it over to the judge as directed.

A three-judge panel for the Court of Appeals noted that even if the judge’s attempt to seize the phone was illegal, the correct procedure was for Jose Ramiro Lopez-Pizana to comply, then appeal.

When Lopez-Pizana appeared out of custody for his arraignment on Feb. 10, 2023, there was a 27-minute gap in the recording of the hearing. Four days later, when the parties reentered the courtroom, Lopez-Pizana was in custody and the participants reconstructed what happened at the arraignment for the record.

In the prosecution’s telling, there were allegations Lopez-Pizana was recording victims or other attendees on his cell phone. District Court Judge Joseph Whitfield asked Lopez-Pizana to turn over his cell phone. In response, Lopez-Pizana “proceeded to break his cell phone, shattering the glass.” Whitfield then ordered that Lopez-Pizana be taken into custody.

Lopez-Pizana’s public defender added that he objected on constitutional grounds to any attempt to look at his client’s cell phone, but did not dispute the destruction.