WE NEED PEOPLE TO SHOW UP Thursday, April 29, 2010 at 1:30pm FOR House Bill 1152, Civil Rights for Persons with Disabilities but if you are coming you may want to confirm. Go to http://www.leg.state.co.us/Clics/CLICS2010A/csl.nsf/Calendars?openFrameset&Frame=Bottom&Src=/Clics/CLICS2010A/csljournals.nsf/GetLatestHseCal?Open Agent and do a search for 1152. It should show it to you under that date and time in Judiciary. We need to show that equal access for people with disabilities is important to us, and that we want a law we can enforce with meaningful penalties that will encourage business to comply with the law, instead of waiting until they get sued, if they ever do, and paying a few dollars in penalties.

A copy of the bill as we wanted it is attached. The bill was heard on the House floor yesterday. There was an effort to kill the bill due to the improved enforcement mechanism in the bill. As we all know, enforcement is a joke (based on statistics provided by the Colorado Civil Rights Division, a disability complaint is 10 times more likely to be dismissed than a non-disability related claim) and those who opposed the bill like that way.

Ultimately the bill was sent back to the House Judiciary and they need to know how important this is to our community. Please come. If you are absolutely unable to come please call or e-mail the members and let them know you want their support, or appreciate it if they are supporting it, (their contact information is below) for passage of the bill with the remedies as it was amended, increased for the first time in more than 100 years, to $4,000, and to fix a technical problem so the criminal provisions can be enforced, and allow attorney’s fees to whoever wins (and only if they win).

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