A trio of bills aimed to reform Colorado’s funeral industry were signed by Governor Jared Polis on May 24th. The bill signing took place at the Governor's Residence at Boettcher Mansion in Denver.
KVNF's Lisa Young spoke with Colorado State Representative Matt Soper, who worked on several pieces of legislation to reform the mortuary industry following the FBI raid of Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors and Donor’s Service in 2018.
In addition to the Montrose and Penrose incidents, Soper says there were an additional 20 cases in Colorado where funeral homes failed to follow the Mortuary Science Code.
Among the three bills, Senate Bill 173 requires Colorado funeral directors, mortuary science practitioners and embalmers to be licensed in the state. A similar law fell by the wayside over forty years ago. The 2024 law will allow for a provisional license in the first year.
Individuals new to the industry will be required to take the Mortuary Science examination which contains a science part and an arts part depending on what function they will provide in a funeral home.
The second bill, House Bill 1335 deals with the funeral home business entity that will include qualified inspectors.
Soper says the legislature also created a “mechanism to develop rules” to ensure that the chain of custody of a deceased body is maintained…in hopes of deterring the shipping of bodies overseas or purposely misplacing bodies for the purpose of committing a crime.
The third bill, House Bill 1254 tags on to an earlier bill from 2018 regarding the co- ownership of a funeral home and a non-tissue donor bank. The bill went a step further by adding protections for the families of deceased loved ones.
Soper says the trio of 2024 bills are a major reform for the funeral home industry in Colorado.
