The law aims to protect people identifying as the opposite sex and how they are addressed, among other things.
"We're suing as an organization and on behalf of two of our members who themselves run parents' rights organizations as well," Sarah Parshall Perry, vice president and legal fellow of Defending Education told AFN. "Not only are our members impacted, but their members are impacted as well, so, we're seeing in conjunction with an organization called Do No Harm, which is doctors and medical professionals who are critical of gender ideology."
While the First Amendment addresses freedom of speech, the 14th addresses equal protection of all laws. It has been used to strike down discriminatory laws and practices. Both are addressed in the lawsuit.
Colorado House Bill 1312, also known as the Kelly Loving Act, was signed into law by Governor Jared Polis last week.
Enforcing the use a trans person’s preferred pronouns is part of the law, but it goes much deeper.
Now, when making child custody decisions Colorado courts are required to consider “deadnaming” and “misgendering” as types of coercive control. This can impact the court judgments on custody and visitation rights.
The law prohibits Colorado courts from enforcing less trans-friendly laws of other states and requires that schools accept any stated reason for a student wishing to change a birth name.
The case could have national implications, and an eventual hearing before the Supreme Court is possible.
"You cannot force an individual to communicate a message with which they do not agree," said Perry. "They have actually now added a provision that anyone who is in a public facility has to refer to the transgender person by the pronouns that person uses or the name that person uses."
That, said Perry, is going to require plaintiffs like Defending Education and its individual members "to affirm lies and communicate messages with which they don't believe."
Perry is not ruling out this eventually going before the U.S. Supreme Court.
"The First Amendment is a principle that has made freedom of speech a long-standing right that Americans have enjoyed and this particular law without the amendment has already been twice to the Supreme Court, and in both instances, they determined that it could not be used to compel speech,” Perry said.
