Why You Should Sign - No Matter Where You Live

Six states have already proven this works.

Alaska, Delaware, Minnesota, New York, Illinois, and Maine have all passed laws protecting working caregivers from workplace discrimination. Over 200 municipalities - including New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. - have done the same at the local level.

Colorado is fighting to become the 7th state.

But this was never just a Colorado story. This is a national crisis - and it is arriving faster than our systems can handle.

The $600 billion in unpaid caregiving labor that holds the American long-term care system together is not a line item in any budget. 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 - 63 million Americans - have no legal protection, no workplace accommodation rights, and no recognition under civil rights law.

When Colorado passes the CARE Act, it doesn't just protect more than 1 million Coloradans. It hands every other state a tested, fiscally proven blueprint and pushes the national conversation one state closer to a federal solution.

Your signature - wherever you live - tells lawmakers that the time is now.

 The Crisis Affecting 63 Million Americans - Including 1 Million in Colorado

More than 63 million Americans provide unpaid care for a loved one. A parent with dementia. A child with a disability. A spouse recovering from a serious illness.

Nationally, this labor is valued at $600 billion annually. Here in Colorado alone, 1,032,000 people - 22% of all Colorado adults - are family caregivers, providing more than $11 billion in unpaid care every year.

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

Yet despite this scale, caregivers have almost no legal protection, no guaranteed right to request workplace accommodations, and no recognition under civil rights law.

The consequences are severe and measurable:

• $44 billion in annual losses for employers nationally from absenteeism, turnover, and lost productivity
• 70% of Colorado caregivers are also 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 like food and medicine
• 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

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."

Four words that captured something bigger than one moment in one HR office.

Because the system had nothing to say otherwise. No Colorado law. No federal protection. No civil rights standing. No acknowledgment - anywhere in employment law, tax policy, or public spending - that the labor caregivers perform has any value to the economy or any standing in the workplace.

Caregiving is called "soft" work. It is the invisible foundation the entire long-term care system is built on. It is worth $600 billion nationally and $11 billion in Colorado alone - and every system that depends on it, from Medicaid to the healthcare continuum to employers themselves, treats it as if it does not exist.

"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 - starting with Colorado, in 2027.

 
The Safety Net We Are Choosing to Let Collapse

We have made a quiet national decision about who bears the cost of care.

Not the healthcare system. Not employers. Not the government.

The caregiver. The daughter who cuts her hours. The son who drains his savings. The spouse who leaves the workforce entirely. The family that goes into debt not because they made bad decisions but because they showed up for someone who needed them.

And here is what no one is saying loudly enough:

When the informal caregiving safety net collapses - and without intervention, it will - 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.

By 2030, all Baby Boomers will be over 65. This is not a projection. It is a calendar. The caregiving demand this country is about to face will overwhelm every system we have if we do not build the policy infrastructure now.

The CARE Act is not a generous accommodation for caregivers. It is an economic necessity. A workforce imperative. A fiscal inevitability.

The only barrier to passing it is the political will to say, in law, what everyone already knows to be true: caregiving is infrastructure, and we cannot keep taking it for granted.

What the Colorado CARE Act Does

The Colorado CARE Act (Caregiver Accommodations and Rights Enhancement Act) modernizes the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA) to explicitly protect working caregivers. It would:

• Add family caregiver status as a protected class under CADA - making it illegal to fire, demote, or refuse to hire someone simply because they have caregiving responsibilities
• Establish a right to request reasonable workplace accommodations - such as schedule flexibility, adjusted hours, or temporary remote work - through an interactive process, without fear of retaliation
• Create a rebuttable presumption for remote work in remote-eligible positions, requiring employers to provide a written explanation if denied
• Prohibit "creative dismissal" - the pattern of restructuring, reassigning, or constructively terminating employees whose caregiving responsibilities have become inconvenient to an employer

What it 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

The Numbers That Make This Easy to Support

For Colorado's 1 million+ caregivers: Over 1,032,000 Coloradans provide unpaid care - 22% of all adults in the state. The CARE Act gives them the legal right to ask for help staying in the workforce without fear of losing their jobs.

For Colorado employers: Projected annual savings of $17.4M–$69.4M from reduced employee turnover - because caregivers who can get reasonable accommodations don't quit.

For Colorado's Medicaid budget: Estimated $9–18 million in annual savings by keeping people out of nursing facilities. Home-based care costs $15,000–$25,000 per year. Nursing facility care costs $75,000–$120,000. Caregivers are the bridge that keeps people home.

For the state: Zero new appropriations required. Implementation absorbed within existing Colorado Civil Rights Division operations.

 
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 national law.

Six states have already passed caregiver workplace protections. A federal framework - the Federal CARE Act - is being advanced in national conversations and is projected to generate a net positive fiscal impact of $5.3 billion over 10 years through reduced federal program costs.

We did not pass the ADA as charity. We passed it because the economy works better when people can participate in it. The CARE Act is the same argument. Give caregivers legal standing, and you keep them in the workforce, out of poverty, and off the public systems that cost far more than any accommodation ever would.

Colorado passing the CARE Act tells Congress and every remaining state legislature: this works, it saves money, voters support it, and there is no excuse left to wait.

 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 for the 2027 legislative session and working with advocates in multiple states as this model spreads nationally.

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.

The only people this financially impacts in any meaningful way are those who currently profit from a system that treats caregiving labor as free.

The caregiver asking for this has never been the problem. The system that ignores them has.

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
• A proven model from six states is enough evidence to act
• Caregiving is a human reality - not a privilege, not an entitlement, but infrastructure that every system in this 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.

Sign. Share. Stand with 63 million American caregivers.

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