by Chris Johnson

LGBTQ activists are celebrating Colorado becoming the 11th state in the country to prohibit the gay and transgender panic defense in state court — but that win came after a battle and was never a sure bet.

Even though Democrats control both chambers of the Colorado Legislature and the governor’s mansion, the legislation faced intraparty opposition and was initially killed in a Democratic-controlled Senate committee before becoming law.

Gov. Jared Polis, the first openly gay man elected governor in U.S. history, signed Senate Bill 20-221 on Monday after earlier this year downplaying the need for it himself in an interview with the Washington Blade. At the time, Polis said gay and transgender panic defense was “not an often used concept” in court.

Amanda Gall, who helped draft the legislation as sexual assault resource prosecutor for the Colorado District Attorneys’ Council, said opponents of the legislation expressed concern “it didn’t really happen, that it wasn’t that frequent or surely this still couldn’t be an issue in Colorado in 2020.”

“We had to engage in educational efforts to say, ‘Yes, this really does happen. This really is an issue in Colorado. This argument is made. Sometimes it’s successful, sometimes it’s not, but we need to keep it out of Colorado courtrooms,” Gall said.

It took a “huge effort,” Gall said, to bring the legislation back from the dead, which were made more complicated with suspension of legislative activities during the coronavirus crisis. Read more via Washington Blade