63 million Americans provide unpaid care for a loved one right now.

They have no legal protection when an employer forces them out of the workforce. No right to request accommodation. No recognition under civil rights law. No acknowledgment - anywhere in employment law, tax policy, or public spending - that the labor they perform has any value to the economy or any standing in the workplace.

This is not a Colorado problem. This is a global crisis arriving faster than any system is prepared to handle.

By 2030, all Baby Boomers will be over 65 in the United States alone. Every developed nation is facing a version of this reckoning simultaneously. The unpaid labor holding the entire long-term care system together is worth $600 billion annually in the United States alone. It does not appear in any GDP calculation. It is not acknowledged in any federal appropriation. It is simply assumed. Expected. Taken.

And the people providing it have nothing.

Colorado is about to start changing that - for all of them.

The Colorado Care Firewall is a two-phase legislative strategy in active development for the 2027 and 2029-2030 sessions. It has not passed yet. That is exactly why your signature matters right now - before the votes, not after them. This petition is part of building the political will to get there.

Six states - Alaska, Delaware, Minnesota, New York, Illinois, and Maine - have passed some form of caregiver workplace protection. Over 200 municipalities including New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. have done the same at the local level. That progress matters. And it is not enough. None of those frameworks pairs a labor standard with civil rights protection in a deliberate two-phase sequential strategy. None have constructed the Medicaid cost avoidance case with this level of fiscal specificity. Colorado is not following those models. Colorado is building the next generation of them - and designing it from the start to be exportable to every remaining state and to Congress.

This is how national change happens. The Family and Medical Leave Act. The Americans with Disabilities Act. The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. Every major workplace protection in American history started as a state experiment before it became federal law. Colorado goes next - and when it does, it hands 63 million Americans, and every caregiver in every country watching, the model their own systems have been waiting for.

Phase 1 - The FLEX Act (2027): A Title 8 labor standard giving employed caregivers the right to request modest schedule flexibility, backed by a mandatory good-faith interactive process. Zero cost to the state. No new leave entitlements. It mandates the conversation before the job is lost.

Phase 2 - The CARE Act (2029-2030): Family caregiver status as a protected class under Colorado's Anti-Discrimination Act. The civil rights protection 63 million Americans — and hundreds of millions of caregivers worldwide — have never had.

Together these two bills project $768.92 million in cumulative Medicaid cost avoidance over ten years in Colorado alone. Zero appropriation. Two bills. One firewall.

Scaled nationally, the fiscal case becomes the argument for federal legislation. Scaled globally, it becomes the model for every country facing the same demographic cliff.

The Crisis Is Measurable

The consequences of inaction are severe and documented:

• $44 billion in annual losses for employers nationally from caregiver absenteeism, turnover, and lost productivity
• 70% of Colorado caregivers are juggling full- or part-time jobs - and many must reduce hours or leave the workforce entirely
• $7,200 in average out-of-pocket costs per caregiver each year - roughly 25% of their income
• 47% of Colorado family caregivers report financial setbacks - taking on debt, draining savings, or struggling to afford basics
• Disproportionate harm to women, who make up 60% of caregivers, communities of color, and disabled Americans who depend on home-based care to avoid institutionalization

Source: AARP & National Alliance for Caregiving, Caregiving in the U.S. 2025: Caring Across States (January 2026)

When the Safety Net Collapses, the Costs Don't Disappear - They Transfer

To Medicaid. To Medicare. To nursing facilities at $75,000-$120,000 per person per year. To emergency rooms. To every public system we have, at a scale that makes $600 billion look manageable.

Colorado's Medicaid Commission has already confirmed what this looks like in real numbers: $213 million in overspending last fiscal year. $443 million projected for the current year. $918 million projected for the year after that. Three years. Three escalating numbers. One direction. And every other state has a version of this trajectory they have not yet named.

The CARE Act and FLEX Act are not generous accommodations for caregivers. They are an economic necessity. A workforce imperative. A fiscal inevitability.

What the Colorado Care Firewall Does NOT Require:

• No guaranteed paid leave
• No exemption from performance standards
• No automatic approval of all requests
• No new taxes, fees, or state appropriations - fully TABOR-compliant

Who I Am

I am a working caregiver, the founder of CASI (Caregiver Advocacy Support Initiative), a registered Colorado volunteer lobbyist, and a stakeholder on Colorado's Medicaid Commission. I am developing the Colorado CARE Act and FLEX Act for the 2027 and 2029-2030 legislative sessions and working with advocates in multiple states as this model spreads nationally.

I know this personally. I am a full-time employee caring for my mother, who has lived with my family since 2016 and was diagnosed with dementia in 2019. In 2024, after two years of documented remote work arrangements, my workplace accommodations were revoked by a blanket return-to-office mandate.

HR's response: "We all have family obligations, but we need to suck it up."

"Suck it up" is not what one manager said to one employee. It is what every system in America says to 63 million people. Every single day. This is not an accident. It is a policy choice. And it is a choice we can change.

But this movement is bigger than me. It belongs to every caregiver who has been told to suck it up. Every disabled person who wants to remain at home. Every employer who has lost a good employee they could have kept with a simple schedule adjustment. Every family that has had to choose between a loved one and a paycheck.

Sign If You Believe:

• Caregivers shouldn't lose their jobs for showing up for their families
• Workers deserve the right to ask for flexibility without punishment
• The safety net cannot hold if we keep ignoring the people holding it up
• Six states have proven this works - the rest have no excuse left to wait
• Caregiving is a human reality - not a privilege, not an entitlement, but infrastructure that every system in this country and every country depends on

You don't need to live in Colorado to sign. You don't need to be a caregiver to care about this. You only need to believe that families deserve support, not punishment - and that we cannot afford to wait.

The evidence that will walk into the Colorado Medicaid Commission on December 11 is being built right now. Add your voice to it:

→ Take the Caring Costs Survey: casiadvocacy.org/research
Module 1 is 90 seconds. Anonymous. No sign-in required. Available in English and Spanish.

→ Learn more: casiadvocacy.org
→ Sign the petition: change.org/p/the-care-act-a-smart-investment-for-working-caregivers-in-america-colorado

The firewall starts in Colorado. It belongs to the world.

Sign. Share. Stand with 63 million American caregivers.