A decade after Aurora voters final decided the destiny of pit bulls in Colorado’s third-largest metropolis — by opting to maintain town’s ban in place — they’ll revisit the query.
In November, voters will resolve whether or not three forms of pit bulls — the American pit bull terrier, the American Staffordshire terrier and the Staffordshire bull terrier — can legally be saved within the metropolis. The Aurora Metropolis Council on Monday referred a measure asking that query to this fall’s poll.
The most recent twist within the saga of pit bulls in Aurora was prompted by a ruling in late March wherein Arapahoe County District Choose Elizabeth Beebe Volz struck down the council’s 2021 choice to repeal town’s long-standing pit bull ban.
Voters seven years earlier had chosen to maintain town’s breed-specific ban — first enacted in 2005 — in place. The choose’s conclusion: As a result of it was the voters who determined in opposition to jettisoning Aurora’s pit bull ban in 2014, solely they might make the choice to reverse that place.
“For the reason that Metropolis didn’t submit the proposed repeal of the pit bull ban to a different vote, its enactment of an ordinance opposite to the vote of the (prior) decision proposing repeal was with out authority and subsequently is void,” she wrote in her March 26 ruling.
Volz was responding to a lawsuit filed by an Aurora resident who challenged town’s 2021 repeal.
However metropolis spokesman Michael Brannen mentioned the repeal stays in impact whereas town appeals the choose’s ruling. In November, voters may make that repeal everlasting or reinstate the unique ban with their choice.
The upcoming vote comes at a time when pit bull bans have been steadily vanishing in Colorado. Denver voters ended town’s 30-year ban on the animals in late 2020. A pit bull ban was lifted in Fort Lupton the earlier 12 months. In 2021, elected leaders in Commerce Metropolis and Lone Tree did the identical.
The primary of Colorado’s bans on pit bulls got here after a lot of extremely publicized assaults by the canine within the Eighties. Many pit bull advocates declare the canine have been unfairly blamed for being overly aggressive, as an alternative insisting that canine house owners are in the end chargeable for correct coaching and socialization of the canine.
Aurora itself was entrance and middle within the pit bull debate almost 20 years in the past, when a 10-year-old boy within the metropolis was mauled by three of the canine in his yard. He misplaced his left arm and sustained face accidents.
The town had banned the breed simply weeks earlier than that incident — by way of the Metropolis Council, not a vote of the individuals.
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