The Colorado Children’s Code doesn’t necessarily prohibit the state Department of Human Services from publicly releasing aggregate statistics about child-abuse hotline calls made from licensed residential care facilities, the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled Thursday, reversing a 2021 district court decision.

Two judges on a three-judge appellate panel agreed with an interpretation of the statute made by The Colorado Sun and 9NEWS, which challenged DHS’ denial of their Colorado Open Records Act requests for documents showing the total number of Colorado Child Abuse and Neglect Hotline calls placed over three years from the Mount St. Vincent, Cleo Wallace and Tennyson Center facilities.  

The agency claimed the statistics could be used to identify individual informants, children or family members, in violation of a confidentiality provision in the Children’s Code, because the street addresses of the facilities are publicly known. But the news organizations, represented by media attorney Steve Zansberg, argued that specific address information by itself isn’t sufficient to figure out someone’s identity.