Colorado governor signs bills to regulate funeral homes more rigorously after years of abuses
Jerilee Bennett/The Gazette via AP, File
Colorado’s funeral home industry, which has been mired in disturbing scandals in recent years, will be under new regulations after Gov. Jared Polis signed three bills on Friday.
The measures add new licensing requirements for funeral home operators, mandate regular inspections of the facilities, and expand oversights of nontransplant tissue banks.
“When grieving the loss of a loved one, the last thing a family should worry about is the trustworthiness and professionalism of those entrusted to care for the person who has passed,” he said in a statement through a spokesperson.
Among the bills signed on Friday was Senate Bill 173, which ends Colorado’s status as the only state in the country without a licensing requirement. Licenses will be required for funeral home directors, embalmers, mortuary science practitioners, crematory operators, and natural reductionists.
To get a license, applicants have to submit an application, pay a fee, and get a criminal background check. To be approved, funeral directors, mortuary science practitioners, and embalmers are also required to have earned a degree from an approved mortuary science school, passed relevant sections of a national board examination, and completed workplace learning experience of one year or longer.
The bill also includes a “grandfather in” option for those who are already operating funeral homes but haven’t met the new requirements, which are set to kick in in 2027. To get a provisional license, applicants must either pass a national standardized exam or show they have had 4,000 hours of experience in their field — which is estimated at about two years — pass a background check, and have a peer reviewer oversee some of their work.
The sponsors of that legislation were Sen. Dylan Roberts, D-Frisco; Rep. Matt Soper, R-Delta; Rep. Brianna Titone, D-Arvada; and Sen. Bob Gardner, R-Colorado Springs.
House Bill 1335, which was also signed Friday, requires the state to conduct routine inspections of funeral homes and crematories. It had the same sponsors.
“Combined, the laws will help restore faith in this valuable industry and ensure that Coloradans’ remains are handled with the care, dignity, and respect they deserve,” Roberts said in a statement.
Lastly, the governor also signed House Bill 1254, which expands regulations on the state’s nontransplant tissue banks, including record requirements and disallowing them from purchasing human remains. It also allows donors to limit any sales of their remains.
Colorado has historically had some of the weakest regulations in the nation for funeral homes.
In 2020, two funeral home operators in Montrose were charged with transferring bodies or body parts to third parties for research without families’ knowledge on dozens of occasions.
That same year, a woman reported receiving ashes from a Leadville funeral home that she thought were excessive for her 5-pound baby. The ashes were found to also include remains from another, larger person, scrap metal, a piece of an earring, and surgical staples. The operator, who also ran a funeral home in Silverthorne, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges related to the commingling of cremated remains last year.
In 2023 in Penrose, nearly 200 other decaying bodies were found in a building run by the Return to Nature Funeral Home, about two hours south of Denver.
Most recently, a former funeral home owner in Denver was arrested on allegations of keeping a woman’s corpse in the back of a hearse for two years and hoarding the cremated remains of 35 people.
Elliott Wenzler is the Western Slope politics reporter for The Aspen Times and its sister publications in Glenwood Springs, Vail, Steamboat Springs, Summit County, and Grand County.
