COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) -11 News is learning more about a lawsuit filed by School District 49 against state leaders and CHSAA. The superintendent says they want to know if a new policy they have on the books is legal. The school board voted and adopted that policy at the beginning of the month. It classifies its sports teams by biological sex and aims to protect women in sports. It prohibits biological men from competing on women’s teams and vice versa.

“Rather than being a recipient of potential penalties or legal action, we filed a lawsuit as a pre-enforcement action to make certain that we can protect opportunities for girls, protect privacy for girls and boys, and make sure we are shielding the district from any legal liability,” said Peter Hilts, Superintendent at District 49.

The 29-page lawsuit was filed Friday. It names the Colorado Civil Rights Division, the Colorado Attorney General and the Colorado High School Activities Association. It details that the state’s polices go against the federal standard, Title IX.

In February, President Donald Trump signed an executive order re-enforcing that law with this message to schools across the country:

“We’re putting every school receiving taxpayer dollars on notice that if you let men take over women’s sports teams or invade your locker rooms,  you will be investigated for violations of Title IX and riskier federal funding,” said the president.

D49′s lawsuit states that current law under Colorado’s Anti-discrimination Act would require the district to allow boys to play in girls sports and to share locker rooms, found in Colorado Revised Statue 24-34-601.

11 News reached out to the state’s civil rights commission who referred us to Attorney General Phil Weiser. His offices said:

“Attorney General Weiser is committed to defending Colorado’s antidiscrimination laws. The office has no further comment due to pending litigation.”

We also reached out to CHSAA. A spokesperson said they have not yet received any official notice of legal action.

D-49 is asking for a change to CHSAA bylaws and state law that allow districts to make their own decision.

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As high school graduation season begins, many seniors are mapping out their next steps — college, technical training, or entering the workforce. But one Colorado student is already reaching for the stars.

Riley Nuttycombe, a senior at New Vista High School, spent her final year redesigning spacesuits as part of a capstone project. She devoted more than 200 hours to creating prototype designs to improve astronaut mobility, comfort, and airflow.

“This is a 3D-printed plastic model with a hood I sewed at home and then stitched on by hand,” Nuttycombe said.

Using a snorkel mask as her starting point, she aimed to rethink helmet designs that she said haven’t changed significantly in decades.

“We’re still using the same helmets we used 25 to 30 years ago,” she said. “I wanted to create something lighter and that had better mobility as well as better airflow.”

Her work extended beyond the classroom this spring when she joined NASA’s Spaceward Bound program. Nuttycombe tested her designs at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah, a simulated Martian environment where she was the only student among a team of educators.

“It feels like you’re on Mars,” she said. “You wake up in the morning, you can’t go outside the habitat, there are tunnels.”

This marked Nuttycombe’s second mission to simulated Mars — where she first found her passion for improving spacesuit design.

“We need our spacesuits to not be injuring our astronauts,” she said. “Making them more lightweight, making them more- fit to the human, not just the mission, is hugely important.”

As she looks toward graduation and her future, Nuttycombe said she hopes to stay involved in aerospace technology.

“I would love to go to space someday, but I think the technology side of things is more where I’m going to end up,” she said.

Her message to others is to start now: “Go for it, try it out — you can do anything.”

The Colorado Supreme Court ruled Monday that a lawsuit filed by the City of Boulder and Boulder County against energy companies Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy can move forward.

The city and county argue in the ongoing lawsuit from 2018 that the companies are knowingly and willfully harming the planet and people through fossil fuel emissions, which the city and county say violates the Clean Air Act. The state Supreme Court agreed with Boulder in a 5-2 split.

Chief Justice Monica Márquez and Justices William Hood, Melissa Hart, Richard Gabriel, and Maria Berkenkotter joined the opinion of the city and county that the case should be allowed to continue in state court, while Justices Carlos Samour and Brian Boatright dissented, saying the case should be handled in federal court.

“We now conclude that Boulder’s claims are not preempted by federal law and, therefore, the district court did not err in declining to dismiss those claims,” Gabriel wrote in his ruling.

“This ruling affirms what we’ve known all along: corporations cannot mislead the public and avoid accountability for the damages they have caused,” Boulder Mayor Aaron Brockett said in a statement. “Our community has suffered significantly from the consequences of climate change, and today’s decision brings us one step closer to justice and the resources we need to protect our future.”

A phone message was left for an Exxon Mobil representative, and an email was sent to Suncor seeking comment Monday afternoon.

Attorneys for the energy companies, however, previously said that fossil fuels are a necessity and one of many things that impact climate change.

“Dealing with climate change not only has to be uniform across the country, but it has to be something that we deal with internationally,” said Phil Goldberg, special counsel to the Manufacturers Accountability Project.

The Manufacturers Accountability Project — a legal advocacy project of the National Association of Manufacturers, which is supporting the energy companies in court — argues the U.S. Supreme Court should take on all these lawsuits by state and local governments, arguing that these issues are regulated by federal law and that the U.S. Supreme Court court already set legal precedent in these types of cases. Samour and Boatright are the only two state Supreme Court justices who agreed.

“Boulder’s damages claims against Exxon Mobil Corporation and three Suncor Energy companies (collectively, “the energy companies”) are based on harms the State of Colorado has allegedly suffered as a result of global climate change,” Samour wrote, in part, in his dissenting opinion. “I am concerned that permitting Boulder to proceed with its claims will interfere with both our federal government’s regulation of interstate air pollution and our federal government’s foreign policies regarding air pollution.”

The Boulder lawsuit is one of several similar lawsuits around the country. While courts in New York, New Jersey, and Maryland have dismissed the cases, the Hawaii Supreme Court gave the green light to a Honolulu lawsuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the decision, keeping that case in state court.

The U.S. Envionmental Protection Agency last year told Colorado public health officials they needed to get tougher on Suncor, which was fined over $10 million for air quality reporting violations.

Marco Simons, an attorney who argued the case for the Boulder plaintiffs, said in a statement that federal law doesn’t prevent any state or local community from seeking damages from companies those communities say harm them.

“This lawsuit is based on a fundamental legal principle: you have to pay your fair share for the harm that you cause,” he said. “Nothing in federal law stops Colorado courts from applying that principle to the fossil fuel industry’s deception about climate change and their knowing alteration of our climate, as the Colorado Supreme Court has now found.”

You can read the Colorado Supreme Court justices’ full opinions here: