Today is June 5, 2024, and here’s what you need to know:

Colorado makes I Matter program permanent, offering free therapy sessions for youth

A state program that provides young people mental health services will continue, as Gov. Jared Polis and the state legislature have made preserving it a priority in the last two sessions.

At the beginning of the 2024 session, Sen. Michaelson Jenet, D-Commerce City, said one of her top priorities was to ensure that the I Matter program, which was slated to expire on June 30 of this year, was made permanent.

Senate Bill 001, the chamber’s first bill of the session and signed by Polis this week, makes the program, which provide up to six free therapy sessions annually for youth, permanent.  

Republican congressional candidate rejects Colorado GOP's endorsement over call to burn Pride flags

Republican candidates and elected officials reacted with outrage Tuesday after the Colorado GOP called to “burn all the Pride flags” in a social media post and evoked a notorious anti-gay slur in a mass email.

The state Republican Party on Monday noted the beginning of Pride Month with an email titled “God Hates Pride” that led off with a prominent graphic featuring the phrase “God Hates Flags,” a rhyming echo of a slogan used in past decades by members of the Westboro Baptist Church when they picketed funerals in opposition to LGBTQ Americans.

“The month of June has arrived and, once again, the godless groomers in our society want to attack what is decent, holy, and righteous so they can ultimately harm our children,” read the email’s message, signed by Colorado GOP Chairman Dave Williams, who linked to an excerpt from a Seattle pastor’s sermon attacking the agenda behind Pride Month as “demonic.”

Colorado justices nudge legislature to take action to combat racial bias in jury selection

In a major pair of decisions on Monday, the Colorado Supreme Court simultaneously found Arapahoe County prosecutors provided non-racial reasons for removing jurors of color from two criminal trials, but that judges failed to adequately determine whether those reasons were credible.

Further, three of the seven justices, with seeming support from the other four, suggested state lawmakers should abolish the mechanism that allows lawyers to remove jurors for no reason at all. The consequence, noted the majority and concurring opinions, is that jurors of color can end up being “struck” for reasons correlating with their race — and trial judges may have difficulty preventing or detecting it.

Litigants “often rely on intuition or ‘gut feelings’ in choosing a jury. This can sometimes bring false stereotypes or even unconscious bias into play,” acknowledged Justice William W. Hood III in the June 3 majority opinions.

Colorado Supreme Court rules DUI suspects may revoke consent to blood test, requiring warrant

Suspected drunk drivers do have the ability to revoke their consent to a blood or breath test, meaning police will generally need to get a warrant to measure intoxication levels, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled on Monday.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court has not explicitly held that states cannot legislate consent for warrantless blood draws on behalf of their citizens, Colorado’s justices believed the court’s recent statements signaled the idea of state-created consent is on shaky constitutional grounds.

“In sum, we hold that a conscious driver may revoke their statutory consent to a blood draw,” wrote Justice Melissa Hart in the June 3 opinion. “Once consent has been revoked, the police are generally required to obtain a warrant before trying to conduct a blood draw.”