Lawmakers introduce new legislation to regulate Colorado funeral home professionals
DENVER, Colo. (KRDO) -- Colorado is the only state in the country that doesn’t regulate funeral home professionals, but that could soon change.
On Monday, Republican State Representative Matt Soper and Democrat State Senator Dylan Roberts introduced legislation which would require funeral home professionals to be licensed, including funeral directors, mortuary science practitioners, embalmers, creationists and natural reductionists.
“What we're doing here with licensure, it's about restoring confidence to Colorado's funeral home industry,” Soper said.
If passed, the bill would require these professionals to be licensed by Jan. 1, 2026. The requirements to receive a license are extensive. An applicant must graduate from an educational institution of their profession, pass a national industry exam, fulfill a one-year apprenticeship and pass a criminal background check.
In the meantime, current funeral home professionals will have to apply for a provisional license to continue to operate. This license requires them to prove to the state they belong in the industry by showing they have 6,500 working hours, have a prior apprenticeship and they too must pass a criminal background check.
“It's unrealistic to ask them to go back to school and get a degree and put their business on hold, and then we would likely lose that service in our community,” Roberts said.
Since Colorado deregulated in the 1980s, it’s become the only state in the country that doesn’t require licensing for funeral home professionals, leading to multiple funeral home tragedies in the last six years, including Sunset Mesa in Montrose, Return to Nature in Penrose and most recently Apollo in Denver.
“We're the only state in America that doesn't require licensure,” Soper said. “That's also why almost all of the horrific stories that we've heard around the nation come out of Colorado.”
Soper and Roberts said they worked closely with the Colorado Funeral Directors Association in drafting the bill. The lawmakers said the organization supports licensing to bring integrity and trust to the industry.
“These are people that work in the industry and were frankly sick and tired of their reputations being tarnished by these bad actors and these horrible cases” Roberts said. “It's fair to say there is a large portion of the funeral professionals in Colorado that support the idea of licensure.”
However, not everyone in the funeral home industry agrees with regulation. Service Corporation International, one of the largest funeral home conglomerates in the country, is expected to lobby against the bill. Soper and Roberts said it’s because SCI believes licensing will increase costs.
“We've been working to strike that balance here because we don't want to run good operators out of the industry and we also don't want to make it expensive to bury your loved ones in Colorado,” Soper said.
The Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies will oversee and enforce the funeral home industry licensing. On Monday, the agency’s director said it has enough resources to do so. This is despite DORA failing to investigate Return to Nature after receiving multiple complaints.
“Things have reached a breaking point,” Roberts said. “We simply cannot remain to be the only state in the nation that does not license funeral professionals.”
