Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I want to say a big thank you to the
people who really make things happen in government, and those
are the staffers. So to Shelby and to Connor, thank
you very much for arranging to have Governor Polis join
me in studio yesterday. And thank you very much for arranging,
perhaps with Governor Polis's assent, to join me again for
(00:23):
a few minutes right now this morning by phone while
he's in the middle of a bill signing tour. Jared,
thank you so much for coming back. I had some
listener questions that I didn't get to yesterday that I
really wanted to get to on behalf of listeners, and
I appreciate your making a few minutes for us.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Sure, it feels like it's been forever rock Yeah, KOA
is almost one hundred and one now, all right, So
a bunch of listeners have concerns about House Bill thirteen twelve.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
It started off very differently from the way it ended,
but there are already lawsuits against it. I would like
you to put in your words what you think this
bill does.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Yeah, So, look, this is an example where the voice
of the people was heard. There were many problems with
the original bill, not only did I oppose it, but
frankly the LGBT rights organizations opposed it. And here's why.
And it requires a little getting into ross. So this
probably takes a minute or two to talk about. Was
what was in the bill and kind of how it
got stripped out and with the strike below, it changed
(01:25):
family law, which is a very fraud area. This is
where you know, parents divorced, they're fighting over custody, they're
fighting over assets, essentially in its original form, and this
is why there was such an outcry. Would have privileged
one kind of decision over another, meaning like, look, you
know and I have friends that are parents of In fact,
I have a friend in Boulder, their parents of a
(01:45):
Trenchender kid and they divorced, so they actually went through this.
You know, you should not treat them differently because of
how they view, you know, giving or not giving gender
or firming care to their kid. I mean, one parent says,
oh wait till you're eighteen, and another says, I want
to start at fourteen. The courts this bill would have
made the courts effectively favor the one who said started
at fourteen. So I think those are personal matters they
(02:07):
should have be cited by families. It's always in the
best interest of the child to be connected with both parents.
That's totally separate the state. If a parent kicks their
kid out for being you know, trans or something like that,
they could lose their custody rights. This is a loving
parent who just says, you know, wait till you're an
adult to make these decisions, versus maybe the other parents
just do it earlier. So that was some of the
problems all of us had with the bill. It would
(02:27):
have set up a very difficult family law situation that
when you have two loving parents who cared for the kid,
would have led to potentially taken one of those parents
out of the kid's life. So fast forward to where
we are. A lot of outcry. It did a lot
of other things too.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
I mean, it.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Actually changed some of our civil rights statues to put
dead dating in there. It did a number of things
in there. All that was stripped out because of the
massive outcry. And again, I didn't agree with everything that
a lot of those people who testified said, but I
certainly agreed with the core of it. Some of the
when you got to the specifics, I mean, I didn't
agree with that people just said gender.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Ah bad.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
But I agreed with the folks who said this should
not be in family law. We should not be explicitly
in our civil rights statute. So what we did is
there was a strike below. Basically there was enough pressure
from legislators, moderate Democrats and others and to their credit,
the LGBT rights organizations and say get rid of all
that stuff with the strike below. And here's what it
does as signed. Okay, it simplifies updates the family documents.
(03:24):
It makes it easier to update if your gender is,
change your marriage license for other documents who did it's
a birth certificates years ago. It just adds to other
documents to that. When a school has a policy of
telling parents that their kid wants to go by another
name because of their gender, and this is very important,
they now have to make sure that that is a
policy of telling the parents the kid goes by another
(03:45):
name for any reason. So it takes the transgender piece
out of it. It just says, you know, your kid,
Sally now wants to go by you know Mo, and
that's what everybody calls her school. If the school notifies
the parent, they say Sally wants to go by Mo.
Doesn't matter whether Sally's transgender just.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Wants to go by right, But it could be the
other way, right the school. The school could adopt a
policy that says we will not tell the parents about
any name change, whether it's gender related or not. It
just has to be included in whatever the policy is.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Right, that's correct. This does not change that this is
a local control education state. There is no band aid
for schools that you either do or don't call people
by names. I think there are schools that probably say
we only call people by their legal name, but there
are many reasons the kids go by nicknames. This just
puts them all on equal footing.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
And then this is yeah, exactly the name thing.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
And then it adds language that is not specific. And
this is where again I think there's an essence of
a disagreement, but it's not about this bill. There is
a lot of disagreement about the Civil Rights Commission. Right,
you've talked about the master Piece k Case, You've talked
about all these This does not in any way, shape
or form like the original bill did. But misgendering or
(04:56):
dead naming, those are nowhere in the statute. What it
does is it makes a slightly different definition there where
it says people if you're calling people at work by
a name that's not their name, that could be a
cause for a civil rights complaint. I'll just give you
two examples. Let's say you have a colleague who's a
little overweight and he called fatso all the time. Now,
if that is persistent, and maybe he doesn't take it
in good spirits, that could very well be a work
(05:18):
for civil rights clause. He could say, Hey, my colleague
calls me fatsoo all the time. You know it? Really,
every time I hear it, it tears me apart because
I have, you know whatever. That's one. Another one would
be let's say, Ross, you're at work and to demean you,
your colleagues are calling you rosy okay, And there's been look,
I'm gay, there's been a feminine gay guys who face this, right,
I'm not particularly effeminate, but there's people call them by
(05:39):
a webisader. And maybe if you guys who are effeminate, right,
if people start calling you Rosie around the marketplace, you know,
around around the workplace, that could be workplace harassment discrimination.
I think could be because there's a whole burn of
proof it doesn't go to the courts. It goes to
Civil Rights Commission. You could different, but it's not. You know,
it's not a crime. It's just something that you deserve
to be safe at work and not called rosy or Fatso,
(06:00):
so that's what the bill does. All the stuff that
people objected to was taken out of it. I get it.
People still don't like the whole business around the Civil
Rights Commission. But this does not any significant way change
any of that.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Okay, I got about one minute one minute left, and
then I got to go to a guy, you a senator.
So anyway, this is a lot of people feel that
this thing with chosen name, adding it to the definitions
where it could be the subject of civil rights complaint
is a significant violation of the First Amendment. Now I
take your point that it's only a small modification, and
that perhaps if somebody is called you know, let's say
(06:32):
there's somebody born male who's going is Jill. Now, when
somebody keeps calling him Joe, it seems to me under
the law. Yeah, now you could have some civil rights
complaint for the wrong name. But if they were doing
the wrong name to do the other gender, than they
could have filed that complaint anyway. So I want to
make this a little bigger thing. Don't you think this
whole thing is potentially a massive violation of First Amendment
(06:55):
speech rights?
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Like why?
Speaker 1 (06:56):
I mean, I realize it might offend somebody if I
call him by the wrong name or the wrong gender.
But how is that a matter of law that should
trump my First Amendment rights?
Speaker 3 (07:08):
Well, first of all, you already would have had a
com play before this bill passed. Absolutely somebody could play
that you were calling them by the wrong name. This
makes it more explicit. Let me give another example. I
think most of your listeners will agree with regards to race.
If you have a colleague who happens to be African
American and people call him the N word. Okay, that
is I think a typical example of work based workforce
discrimination and harassment. I mean, I think most of your
(07:30):
decision agree. Maybe someone a radical fringe would. So this
is basically saying yes for reasons related to gender, I
can't be calling you Rosie at work. It's the meaning
just call people by their name. It's not a criminal
act to do otherwise, but it can be a civil
rights infringement at work and people should be safe at
work to not be discriminated. Again, so this is not
a transgender That gender had color productions just as much before.
(07:53):
And this doesn't change that.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
It's a First Amendment. You don't think it's an infringement
on the First Amendment.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
What you're saying, Well, look, obviously you have to if
you have an employer.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
There's things you can say you and can't say at work, right,
I mean, this is not like you know, with your
friends in your house at all, right, right, I mean
that's not against the law. When you go to work.
You cannot call your African American colleague the N word.
I mean that that is, you know, that is a
civil rights violation. So of course this is a great
diverse state. You may have to work with somebody who's transgender,
somebody you may have to work with somebody who who's
(08:25):
African American. You like, you just have to respect whoever
you work with. You you know, and you you all
try to get along. And that is in the professional
side of things, how we all get together as a state.
And I would add this goes always if you have
a doubt Christian who you work with, you have to
respect that. You never mock their Christianity. You never mocked
their faith at work again in your own home. So
(08:46):
you know, if you're with friends and you can argue
about Christianity or transgender and you can get mean, ambitious,
and there's no violation of law, totally free speech. But
when you're at work, absolutely there are expectations of what
you do at work and treat everybody's civily. This bill
doesn't do much about that, but that was already the
law in Colorado.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Governor Jared Poulis, thanks so much for your time. Got
a senator to go talk to right now. I'm very
very grateful for talking to you two days in a row.
Thank you so much for making time to respond to
my listeners. Which one you're talking to, Ron Johnson from
the great state of Wisconsin, one of my favorite cheeseheads.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Go all right, we'll send us some Oh all right.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
I accidentally hung up on Jared, but hopefully he's not mad.
I want to say a big thank you to the
people who really make things happen in government, and those
are the staffers. So to Shelby and to Connor, thank
you very much for arranging to have Governor Polis join
me in studio yesterday. And thank you very much for arranging,
perhaps with Governor Polis's assent, to join me again for
(00:23):
a few minutes right now this morning by phone while
he's in the middle of a bill signing tour. Jared,
thank you so much for coming back. I had some
listener questions that I didn't get to yesterday that I
really wanted to get to on behalf of listeners, and
I appreciate your making a few minutes for us.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Sure, it feels like it's been forever rock Yeah, KOA
is almost one hundred and one now, all right, So
a bunch of listeners have concerns about House Bill thirteen twelve.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
It started off very differently from the way it ended,
but there are already lawsuits against it. I would like
you to put in your words what you think this
bill does.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Yeah, So, look, this is an example where the voice
of the people was heard. There were many problems with
the original bill, not only did I oppose it, but
frankly the LGBT rights organizations opposed it. And here's why.
And it requires a little getting into ross. So this
probably takes a minute or two to talk about. Was
what was in the bill and kind of how it
got stripped out and with the strike below, it changed
(01:25):
family law, which is a very fraud area. This is
where you know, parents divorced, they're fighting over custody, they're
fighting over assets, essentially in its original form, and this
is why there was such an outcry. Would have privileged
one kind of decision over another, meaning like, look, you
know and I have friends that are parents of In fact,
I have a friend in Boulder, their parents of a
(01:45):
Trenchender kid and they divorced, so they actually went through this.
You know, you should not treat them differently because of
how they view, you know, giving or not giving gender
or firming care to their kid. I mean, one parent says,
oh wait till you're eighteen, and another says, I want
to start at fourteen. The courts this bill would have
made the courts effectively favor the one who said started
at fourteen. So I think those are personal matters they
(02:07):
should have be cited by families. It's always in the
best interest of the child to be connected with both parents.
That's totally separate the state. If a parent kicks their
kid out for being you know, trans or something like that,
they could lose their custody rights. This is a loving
parent who just says, you know, wait till you're an
adult to make these decisions, versus maybe the other parents
just do it earlier. So that was some of the
problems all of us had with the bill. It would
(02:27):
have set up a very difficult family law situation that
when you have two loving parents who cared for the kid,
would have led to potentially taken one of those parents
out of the kid's life. So fast forward to where
we are. A lot of outcry. It did a lot
of other things too.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
I mean, it.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Actually changed some of our civil rights statues to put
dead dating in there. It did a number of things
in there. All that was stripped out because of the
massive outcry. And again, I didn't agree with everything that
a lot of those people who testified said, but I
certainly agreed with the core of it. Some of the
when you got to the specifics, I mean, I didn't
agree with that people just said gender.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Ah bad.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
But I agreed with the folks who said this should
not be in family law. We should not be explicitly
in our civil rights statute. So what we did is
there was a strike below. Basically there was enough pressure
from legislators, moderate Democrats and others and to their credit,
the LGBT rights organizations and say get rid of all
that stuff with the strike below. And here's what it
does as signed. Okay, it simplifies updates the family documents.
(03:24):
It makes it easier to update if your gender is,
change your marriage license for other documents who did it's
a birth certificates years ago. It just adds to other
documents to that. When a school has a policy of
telling parents that their kid wants to go by another
name because of their gender, and this is very important,
they now have to make sure that that is a
policy of telling the parents the kid goes by another
(03:45):
name for any reason. So it takes the transgender piece
out of it. It just says, you know, your kid,
Sally now wants to go by you know Mo, and
that's what everybody calls her school. If the school notifies
the parent, they say Sally wants to go by Mo.
Doesn't matter whether Sally's transgender just.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Wants to go by right, But it could be the
other way, right the school. The school could adopt a
policy that says we will not tell the parents about
any name change, whether it's gender related or not. It
just has to be included in whatever the policy is.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Right, that's correct. This does not change that this is
a local control education state. There is no band aid
for schools that you either do or don't call people
by names. I think there are schools that probably say
we only call people by their legal name, but there
are many reasons the kids go by nicknames. This just
puts them all on equal footing.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
And then this is yeah, exactly the name thing.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
And then it adds language that is not specific. And
this is where again I think there's an essence of
a disagreement, but it's not about this bill. There is
a lot of disagreement about the Civil Rights Commission. Right,
you've talked about the master Piece k Case, You've talked
about all these This does not in any way, shape
or form like the original bill did. But misgendering or
(04:56):
dead naming, those are nowhere in the statute. What it
does is it makes a slightly different definition there where
it says people if you're calling people at work by
a name that's not their name, that could be a
cause for a civil rights complaint. I'll just give you
two examples. Let's say you have a colleague who's a
little overweight and he called fatso all the time. Now,
if that is persistent, and maybe he doesn't take it
in good spirits, that could very well be a work
(05:18):
for civil rights clause. He could say, Hey, my colleague
calls me fatsoo all the time. You know it? Really,
every time I hear it, it tears me apart because
I have, you know whatever. That's one. Another one would
be let's say, Ross, you're at work and to demean you,
your colleagues are calling you rosy okay, And there's been look,
I'm gay, there's been a feminine gay guys who face this, right,
I'm not particularly effeminate, but there's people call them by
(05:39):
a webisader. And maybe if you guys who are effeminate, right,
if people start calling you Rosie around the marketplace, you know,
around around the workplace, that could be workplace harassment discrimination.
I think could be because there's a whole burn of
proof it doesn't go to the courts. It goes to
Civil Rights Commission. You could different, but it's not. You know,
it's not a crime. It's just something that you deserve
to be safe at work and not called rosy or Fatso,
(06:00):
so that's what the bill does. All the stuff that
people objected to was taken out of it. I get it.
People still don't like the whole business around the Civil
Rights Commission. But this does not any significant way change
any of that.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Okay, I got about one minute one minute left, and
then I got to go to a guy, you a senator.
So anyway, this is a lot of people feel that
this thing with chosen name, adding it to the definitions
where it could be the subject of civil rights complaint
is a significant violation of the First Amendment. Now I
take your point that it's only a small modification, and
that perhaps if somebody is called you know, let's say
(06:32):
there's somebody born male who's going is Jill. Now, when
somebody keeps calling him Joe, it seems to me under
the law. Yeah, now you could have some civil rights
complaint for the wrong name. But if they were doing
the wrong name to do the other gender, than they
could have filed that complaint anyway. So I want to
make this a little bigger thing. Don't you think this
whole thing is potentially a massive violation of First Amendment
(06:55):
speech rights?
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Like why?
Speaker 1 (06:56):
I mean, I realize it might offend somebody if I
call him by the wrong name or the wrong gender.
But how is that a matter of law that should
trump my First Amendment rights?
Speaker 3 (07:08):
Well, first of all, you already would have had a
com play before this bill passed. Absolutely somebody could play
that you were calling them by the wrong name. This
makes it more explicit. Let me give another example. I
think most of your listeners will agree with regards to race.
If you have a colleague who happens to be African
American and people call him the N word. Okay, that
is I think a typical example of work based workforce
discrimination and harassment. I mean, I think most of your
(07:30):
decision agree. Maybe someone a radical fringe would. So this
is basically saying yes for reasons related to gender, I
can't be calling you Rosie at work. It's the meaning
just call people by their name. It's not a criminal
act to do otherwise, but it can be a civil
rights infringement at work and people should be safe at
work to not be discriminated. Again, so this is not
a transgender That gender had color productions just as much before.
(07:53):
And this doesn't change that.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
It's a First Amendment. You don't think it's an infringement
on the First Amendment.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
What you're saying, Well, look, obviously you have to if
you have an employer.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
There's things you can say you and can't say at work, right,
I mean, this is not like you know, with your
friends in your house at all, right, right, I mean
that's not against the law. When you go to work.
You cannot call your African American colleague the N word.
I mean that that is, you know, that is a
civil rights violation. So of course this is a great
diverse state. You may have to work with somebody who's transgender,
somebody you may have to work with somebody who who's
(08:25):
African American. You like, you just have to respect whoever
you work with. You you know, and you you all
try to get along. And that is in the professional
side of things, how we all get together as a state.
And I would add this goes always if you have
a doubt Christian who you work with, you have to
respect that. You never mock their Christianity. You never mocked
their faith at work again in your own home. So
(08:46):
you know, if you're with friends and you can argue
about Christianity or transgender and you can get mean, ambitious,
and there's no violation of law, totally free speech. But
when you're at work, absolutely there are expectations of what
you do at work and treat everybody's civily. This bill
doesn't do much about that, but that was already the
law in Colorado.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Governor Jared Poulis, thanks so much for your time. Got
a senator to go talk to right now. I'm very
very grateful for talking to you two days in a row.
Thank you so much for making time to respond to
my listeners. Which one you're talking to, Ron Johnson from
the great state of Wisconsin, one of my favorite cheeseheads.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Go all right, we'll send us some Oh all right.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
I accidentally hung up on Jared, but hopefully he's not mad.
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