Per-Facility Statistical Counts of Child-Abuse Hotline Reports Are Disclosable Under CORA Despite § 19-1-307(1)(a) Confidentiality

Case: Brubaker v. Colorado Sun, 2026 CO 18 (Colo. Mar. 30, 2026)
Court: Colorado Supreme Court (en banc)
Parties: Amanda Brubaker (CDHS records custodian) v. Colorado Sun and Tegna, Inc., d/b/a KUSA-TV/9News

1. Introduction

Brubaker v. Colorado Sun arises at the intersection of two core public-law commitments: (1) Colorado’s strong policy favoring governmental transparency through the Colorado Open Records Act (“CORA”), and (2) the Children’s Records Act’s strict confidentiality for “reports of child abuse or neglect” and identifying information within them.

The Colorado Sun and KUSA-TV/9News (the “Media Organizations”) sought a narrow set of information from the Colorado Department of Human Services (“CDHS”): for each of three named state-funded residential child care facilities (“RCCFs”), the total number of reports made to local child welfare authorities over a three-year period and, separately, how many of those were “screened in” for investigation. CDHS refused, invoking § 19-1-307(1)(a), contending that releasing facility-specific counts would disclose (or at least confirm) an “address” contained in protected child-abuse/neglect reports.

The case therefore presented two practical questions with statewide significance: whether aggregated, facility-level counts constitute protected “reports” or “identifying information,” and how far confidentiality extends when the requester seeks statistics rather than case files.

2. Summary of the Opinion

The Colorado Supreme Court held that CDHS must disclose the “six cardinal numbers” sought: (1) the total number of reports from each of the three facilities, and (2) the number screened in at each facility, for the requested period. The Court ruled that § 19-1-307(1)(a) is unambiguous, but that CDHS nonetheless failed to meet its burden to show that the requested numbers are (i) “reports of child abuse or neglect” or (ii) the “name,” “address,” or “any other identifying information” of a child, family, or informant “contained in such reports.”

Procedurally, the Court reversed the court of appeals’ decision to remand for fact finding and directed that the matter return to the district court for further proceedings consistent with the opinion, including consideration of attorney fees and costs under § 24-72-204(5)(b).

3. Analysis

3.1 Precedents Cited (and Their Role)

  • Colo. Sun v. Brubaker, 2023 COA 101: The Supreme Court reversed the division’s remand approach. The division had found ambiguity in § 19-1-307(1)(a) and adopted a limiting construction (only “identifying” addresses are protected). The Supreme Court rejected that ambiguity finding and treated the provision as plain-language clear.
  • Peck v. McCann, 43 F.4th 1116 (10th Cir. 2022): Used by the court of appeals to avoid potential First Amendment concerns by narrowing the statute to “identifying disclosures.” The Supreme Court distinguished Peck as “inapposite” on the theory that “every name” and “every address” is identifying information anyway, eliminating (in the majority’s view) the supposed overbreadth issue that animated Peck.
  • United States v. Williams-Davis, 90 F.3d 490 (D.C. Cir. 1996): The court of appeals invoked this case to support “reverse ejusdem generis.” The Supreme Court referenced the canon’s origin but found the resulting statutory reading unreasonable in this context.
  • Fischer v. United States, 603 U.S. 480 (2024) and Sw. Airlines Co. v. Saxon, 596 U.S. 450 (2022): Cited for the classic ejusdem generis framework (general terms at the end of a list are typically constrained by the specific preceding terms), largely to contextualize why the court of appeals’ “reverse” variant was a departure from the common approach.
  • People v. Sims, 2020 COA 78: Cited as Colorado authority describing ejusdem generis.
  • Shook v. Pitkin Cnty. Comm'rs, 2015 COA 84 and Sargent Sch. Dist. No. RE-33J v. W. Servs., Inc., 751 P.2d 56 (Colo. 1988): These anchor the CORA backdrop: exceptions are construed narrowly and the custodian bears the burden of proving an exception applies. The majority leveraged this framework to insist CDHS substantiate why “six cardinal numbers” fall within the confidentiality exception.
  • Reno v. Marks, 2015 CO 33; Denver Post Corp. v. Ritter, 255 P.3d 1083 (Colo. 2011); Elder v. Williams, 2020 CO 88; Doubleday v. People, 2016 CO 3: These are cited for standard statutory-interpretation rules: de novo review, plain meaning, context, and grammar.
  • In re People in Int. of A.T.C., 2023 CO 19; Archuleta v. Roane, 2024 CO 74; Educhildren LLC v. Cnty. of Douglas Bd. of Equalization, 2023 CO 29: Invoked for the “absurd results” canon, which the majority used against CDHS’s “confirmation” theory.
  • Carrera v. People, 2019 CO 83 and Crandall v. City & Cnty. of Denver, 238 P.3d 659 (Colo. 2010): Cited for the proposition that when statutory text is unambiguous, interpretive analysis ends.
  • United States v. Sineneng-Smith, 590 U.S. 371 (2020); Castro v. United States, 540 U.S. 375 (2003); United States v. Samuels, 808 F.2d 1298 (8th Cir. 1987): Cited for the party-presentation principle. The majority relied on these to refuse to speculate whether raw counts might ever be “other identifying information,” because CDHS had not advanced that argument.
Notable internal tension: The majority adopted CDHS’s plain-text reading (names and addresses are always protected) but rejected CDHS’s application (numbers do not disclose protected content). The concurrence-in-judgment-only argued the majority’s application effectively compels prohibited “confirmation” of confidential reports and undermines the statute’s protective purpose.

3.2 Legal Reasoning (How the Court Got There)

  1. Step One: Identify the governing disclosure framework.
    CORA presumes public access to “public records,” and exceptions must be narrowly construed. A custodian invoking a statutory bar bears the burden. CDHS invoked CORA’s “contrary to any state statute” exception (§ 24-72-204(1)(a)) and pointed to § 19-1-307(1)(a) as the “contrary” statute.
  2. Step Two: Resolve statutory meaning without extra interpretive tools if unambiguous.
    The Court held § 19-1-307(1)(a) is unambiguous: it renders confidential (i) “reports of child abuse or neglect” and (ii) within those reports, the “name,” “address,” and “any other identifying information” of a child, family, or informant. The Court rejected the court of appeals’ ambiguity finding and its “reverse ejusdem generis” limitation that would protect only “identifying” addresses. On the Court’s view, every address is identifying information, so the “identifying address” carveout does no real work.
  3. Step Three: Apply the statute to the specific records requested—and enforce the custodian’s burden.
    The requested materials were not the reports themselves, nor names or addresses within reports, but counts (six “cardinal numbers”). CDHS argued that per-facility counts would disclose or “confirm” the protected “address” contained in reports. The Court disagreed for two principal reasons:
    • “Already public” premise: The facilities’ addresses are publicly known; disclosure cannot “make public what is already public.” The Court concluded that § 19-1-307(1)(a) does not prohibit confirming an address that is publicly available.
    • Absurdity/overbreadth in application: Accepting CDHS’s theory would convert the confidentiality provision into a sweeping bar on virtually any information “related to” reports from an RCCF, undermining transparency and oversight of state-funded residential facilities. The Court found no legislative signal that the statute was meant to disable statistical accountability.
    The Court also relied on CDHS’s own willingness to disclose aggregate (all-facilities-combined) totals as undercutting the claimed statutory barrier; CDHS could not explain why aggregation across three facilities would be permissible but per-facility breakdown would not.
  4. Step Four: Limit the holding to arguments made (party presentation).
    The Court noted CDHS did not argue the counts were “other identifying information” (apart from its interpretive dispute with the court of appeals), so the Court declined to address that possibility.

3.3 Impact (Likely Effects on Future Cases and Agency Practice)

  • Statistical transparency about child-welfare systems increases. Requesters can use CORA to obtain facility-level counts of hotline reports and screening outcomes, at least where the request seeks numeric totals rather than report contents and where the agency cannot show the numbers themselves reveal protected identities.
  • Custodians must prove “identifying” harm, not rely on generalized confirmation theories. The decision emphasizes the custodian’s burden and narrow construction of CORA exceptions. Assertions that disclosure “confirms” something protected may require a tighter causal showing than CDHS offered here.
  • Doctrinal clarification: § 19-1-307(1)(a) is unambiguous; reverse ejusdem generis is disfavored here. Colorado courts and litigants are less likely to treat the statute as ambiguous or to import narrowing canons to rewrite the “name and address” clause.
  • New litigation pressure point: when do numbers become “identifying information”? The majority left open whether certain small-number disclosures (e.g., “1 report in a tiny facility in a short window”) could be “other identifying information.” The concurrence forecasts significant “tomorrow problems” and argues the majority already crossed into prohibited “confirmation” of report existence.
  • Fee-shifting consequences. The remand expressly directs the district court to address attorney fees and costs under § 24-72-204(5)(b), reinforcing the practical stakes of erroneous denials.

4. Complex Concepts Simplified

  • “Cardinal numbers”: simple numeric counts (e.g., “15 reports,” “3 screened in”), not documents describing incidents.
  • “Screened in” vs. “screened out”: after a hotline call/report is routed to a county office, the county decides whether to open an investigation (“screen in”) or take no further investigative action (“screen out”).
  • CORA’s “contrary to any state statute” exception: CORA generally requires disclosure unless another state law forbids it. Here, CDHS relied on the Children’s Records Act as that forbidding statute.
  • “Identifying information”: information that, alone or together with other available information, is likely to reveal a person’s identity. The majority treated names and addresses as always identifying by their nature.
  • Ejusdem generis / “reverse ejusdem generis”: a rule of reading lists in statutes. Traditional ejusdem generis narrows a general phrase based on the specific words before it. “Reverse” ejusdem generis would instead narrow the specific words based on a general phrase later in the list. The court of appeals used the “reverse” idea; the Supreme Court rejected it here as producing an unreasonable reading.
  • Party presentation principle: courts generally decide cases on the arguments parties actually make, rather than inventing new theories. The majority used this principle to avoid deciding whether numeric counts could ever be “other identifying information.”

5. Conclusion

Brubaker v. Colorado Sun establishes a practical transparency rule in Colorado public-records law: even though § 19-1-307(1)(a) unambiguously protects child-abuse/neglect reports and identifying details within them, it does not, on the record and arguments presented, permit CDHS to withhold per-facility statistical counts of reports and screening decisions. The decision strengthens CORA’s presumption of disclosure for non-case-specific oversight data while preserving categorical confidentiality for the reports themselves and the names/addresses contained within them.

The separate concurrence underscores that the boundary between permissible statistical disclosure and prohibited “confirmation” of confidential reports is likely to remain contested. Future disputes will likely focus on whether particular numeric disclosures, in context, function as “other identifying information” or effectively reveal protected facts about specific children, families, or informants.