Colorado’s legal aid community could be reinforced with over $2 million in funding in fiscal year 2025 if Colorado House Bill 24-1286 successfully passes into law.
The measure, called the Equal Justice Fund Authority, would create a special purpose authority by the same name “for the purpose of providing monetary support to local organizations that provide legal representation and legal advice to low-income individuals,” according to the bill’s summary.
The bill is sponsored by a trio of Democratic legislators, Reps. Junie Joseph and Mandy Lindsay and Sen. Dylan Roberts. It has garnered significant support from legal aid organizations in Colorado.
“Passing this bill would be an extraordinary moment for legal aid in Colorado,” said Matt Baca, executive director of Colorado Legal Services. Baca said the funding would allow CLS and other legal aid organizations to hire more attorneys and advocates to serve low-income individuals in Colorado. “… this bill stands for the proposition that in Colorado, we take seriously the needs of low-income folks who may be facing the most dire circumstances of their lives.”
Data from the Colorado judicial branch shows that far more often than not, a respondent party appears pro se before the court in Colorado. Overall, 87% of respondent parties were pro se in domestic relations, district civil and county civil cases in Colorado in fiscal 2023. On the other side of the courtroom, only 32% of filing parties appeared pro se, a number made higher by a 75% pro se rate in domestic relations cases. The pro se rate for district civil and county civil cases were lower at 16% and 20%, respectively.
Lindsay told the committee she was coming before them as a sponsor of the bill to hopefully increase access to the justice system.
“We have set up a system where technically, aspirationally, all people can go to court to make their case on a variety of legal issues,” said Lindsay. “And usually, most successfully, that is done when an attorney is on the case. But the reality is many low-income folks, burdened by costs, end up representing themselves or not showing up at all. This is the reality, and this is not justice.”
The fund would come from an additional $20 fee on several filings in the Colorado court systems. The $20 would be tacked on to the Colorado Court of Appeals docket fee, docket fees in civil actions and docket fees in probate proceedings, according to the text of the bill.
The initial text of the bill included a waiver of the fees in certain cases, but the amended version of the bill that passed in committee removed that waiver.
The funding mechanism drew the most opposition in the committee hearing. Representatives from the Colorado Creditors Bar Association testified in opposition, including Maklya Moody, the organization’s legislative chair.
Moody said the CCBA wasn’t opposed to getting legal representation to the people who need it, but did have a problem with the funding mechanism.
“You’re putting a burden on everyone who accesses courts, regardless of the situation, and you’re expecting them to pay the legal fees of somebody else,” said Moody. “Not even necessarily their own opposition in their own case. That defies the American rule concept, and it doesn’t serve the purpose of providing access to justice.”
Representatives from Associated Collection Agencies and Stand for Children Colorado also testified in opposition to the bill.
The organizations and individuals who testified in support of the bill represented a broad swath of legal issues, but many expressed their belief that the fund would help to increase access to legal services in Colorado.
Mekela Goehring, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, wrote in an email to Law Week that RMIAN’s staff attorneys represented 829 individuals in Colorado in their immigration cases. The cases included children who had been abused or neglected, survivors of human trafficking, asylum seekers and more.
“But we had to turn away the vast majority of individuals who reached out to us for help,” wrote Goehring. “With additional funding, there is so much more that we could do.”
Zach Neumann, CEO of the Community Economic Defense Project, told Law Week many of his organization’s clients need its services because of a challenging debt or because they were in a legal action without representation and something bad happened.
“I think what’s really compelling about this bill is that it funds CLS to a greater degree, it lets them get significantly more attorneys, and so I think we see fewer downstream problems and fewer people need the kind of emergency assistance that we provide,” said Neumann.
Colorado is also lagging behind several Western states on legal aid funding per capita, Emo Overall, executive director of the Colorado Access to Justice Commission, told Law Week Colorado. The state currently ranks 10th out of 14 Western states on the measure, according to a recent report released by CAJC.
“About half of the people who qualify for legal aid, and you have to be pretty low-income to qualify, are still turned away because of lack of resources,” said Overall. “So we’re nowhere near where we need to be.”
Lydia McCoy, executive director for the Colorado Center on Law and Policy, also wrote to Law Week Colorado via email about Colorado’s current legal aid situation.
“In order for the rules of government to work as intended, all people need access to the support and representation of legal professionals to protect them from harm and help them navigate complex systems,” wrote McCoy. “Currently Colorado is woefully behind investing in legal aid as compared to neighboring states, and that needs to be remedied in order for people to be able to enforce laws intended to support them.”
The bill, and its creation of a new fund to help increase legal aid resources, narrowly cleared its first hurdle through the House Judiciary Committee by a vote of 6-5. Democratic Reps. Marc Snyder and Steven Woodrow joined Republican Reps. Ryan Armagost, Gabe Evans and Matt Soper in no votes. The bill’s next action will take place in the House Finance Committee, with no date set as of publication.