Colorado Becomes Final State to License Funeral Industry After Numerous Atrocities

Colorado finally aligned itself with the rest of the country, enacting legislation to further regulate the state's infamously troubled funeral home industry.

Governor Jared Polis signed two bills into law on Friday, May 24, to require licensure and education for people who work as funeral professionals and to expand various regulations of the Mortuary Science Code. Before this, Colorado was the only state in the nation that did not mandate any license or certification for funeral directors.

The lack of oversight in Colorado's funeral industry has made the state an epicenter of abuse and malpractice. Over the last four years, several funeral homes across the state have been discovered giving families fake or incorrect ashes, illegally selling bodies for profit, improperly storing human remains, and committing other atrocities that have victimized hundreds of Coloradans.

“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," Polis said in a statement. "I am proud to be signing these bills."

One of the new laws, Senate Bill 24-173, requires individuals to obtain a license to work as a funeral director, mortuary science practitioner, embalmer, cremationist or natural reductionist by January 1, 2027.

To get a license, they must have graduated from an accredited educational institution in their field, completed an apprenticeship and passed both the national board exam and a criminal background check. Those who already work in the funeral industry can qualify for a license if they have worked at least 4,000 hours in the field, pass a criminal background check and go two years without receiving any disciplinary actions.

The other law, House Bill 24-1335, makes numerous changes to regulations for the funeral industry, including requiring routine inspections of funeral homes, allowing inspections outside of business hours and after a business has ceased operations, and adding failure to respond to complaints as grounds for discipline.

“Enough is enough. It is long past time for funeral tragedies in our state to stop," Senator Dylan Roberts, a sponsor of both bills, said in a statement. "Coloradans should be able to trust the services being provided during the most difficult moments of their families’ lives — but too often in Colorado, our state’s lack of oversight results in tragedy instead. We worked hard this year to correct that."

Even as the bill was being proposed, in February authorities found the corpse of a 63-year-old woman inside a hearse and the cremated remains of at least thirty people at the Denver residence of former funeral home owner Miles Harford. The woman's family was unknowingly given the ashes of another person, while her body lay abandoned in Harford's backyard for a year and a half. The other cremated remains were up to a decade old.

Only four months earlier, in October 2023, the decaying remains of nearly 200 people were found improperly stored at the Return to Nature Funeral Home facility in Penrose. Before that, Lake County Coroner Shannon Kent was discovered mixing cremated remains and mishandling bodies, and Sunset Mesa Funeral Home was found to be illegally selling the bodies or body parts of hundreds of victims without their families' consent.

Legislators have taken steps toward more regulation before, such as passing a bill allowing involuntary inspections of funeral homes in 2022 and one making abuse of a corpse a felony in 2020. But they hope that these new, more sweeping laws will turn the tide for the funeral industry.

Both bills received bipartisan sponsorship and passed with support from more than 80 percent of lawmakers.

"Combined, the laws will help restore faith in this valuable industry," Roberts said, "and ensure that Coloradans’ remains are handled with the care, dignity, and respect they deserve."