Today, the law elevates the rights of private corporations over the rights of people who live in Colorado communities.  For a video that explains this, see So Your Community is Going to be Fracked, Mined, Factory Farmed, or fill in the blank…

Private corporations regularly invoke these rights and privileges when their interests conflict with communities’ attempt to protect the local environment, economy and workforce, and residents’ health, safety and welfare.  In these cases, courts typically side with private corporations (such as oil and gas frackers) and render locally passed laws unenforceable.  The Colorado Rights Amendment elevates the rights of people, communities and nature over the interests of private corporations.

An Issue Committee funded primarily by the Oil and Gas Industry and other corporate interests ran a state ballot initiative in 2016 to make it much harder for nonprofit groups like ours to run state ballot initiatives.  That ballot initiative, nicknamed “Raise the Bar” and now called Amendment 71, passed and is currently being challenged in state court.