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CU Boulder Athletes are Getting Paid, Denver Public Schools Fights Feds on Gender-Inclusive Bathrooms Jack Armstrong
Headlines Monday Sept 1, 2025
Colorado Boulder Takes On Georgia Tech, Athletes to be Paid for NIL
Yesterday, The Colorado Buffaloes took to Folsom field to face the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets in the first game of the 2025-2026 football season.
The excitement for the new season is coupled with a recent federal court settlement that allows some college athletes to be paid like professionals. A court settlement in the case, House Versus NCAA allows athletes to take on Name, Image, and Likeness deals, partnering with their universities in big money contracts. The case was settled this past July.
As part of the settlement, CU plans to spend $20.5 million through its revenue sharing program, which will be distributed among its athlete talent.
According to the NCAA, over the next 10 years the association will spend $2.8 billion on athletes who have competed from the 2016 season up through the present.
Axios Boulder has reported that the contracts signed by athletes to become part of CU’s revenue-sharing program are not public records and cannot be accessed for transparency purposes. Governor Jared Polis signed an anticipatory implementation law this past March, that legalized Universities like CU using ticket sales, merchandise sales, and broadcast streaming revenues to pay athletes.
Governor Polis had raised concerns about the lack of transparency-geared language in the legislation. Other public officials like Boulder-based state Senator Judy Amabile said that the athletes are not being paid with public funds and still have student privacy rights.
DPS All-Gender Bathrooms
Denver Public Schools are resisting the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights. The office is requesting DPS rollback the district’s policy on inclusive restrooms for students, this includes a gender-inclusive bathroom just installed at the start of this school year. This is according to Fox 31 News in Denver.
The Trump Administration told DPS they violated Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments by converting a girls restroom into a gender nonconforming restroom. The Office of Civil Rights claimed the district was, “sullying students’ educational experience with sex discrimination,” saying the Office had launched a direct investigation against the District.
Denver Public Schools maintains they’re confused by the operations of the Office of Civil Rights. Dr. Alex Marrero , Denver Public Schools Superintendent told Fox 31 that OCR has not made an on-site review of the reinstalled bathroom and has refused requests for further mediation.
Advocates for Denver Schools said this level of attacks remains the distraction causing students and their teachers to be taken away from their learning. President of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association Rob Gould told Fox 31 News, “for our educators, I think they know this is a distraction…They just want to be able to focus on their students in the classroom instead of all this noise.”
A mandate issued by the Office of Civil Rights is requiring DPS revert back to single-gender restrooms, remove policies in the district’s LGBTQ+ toolkit, issue a memorandum to all DPS schools on accessible bathrooms for each gender, and adopt so-called “biology-based definitions” for male and female sexes. Fox 31 said there’s no indication if the district will adopt the changes, but superintendent Marrero said that DPS stands with its LGBTQ+ students.
Colorado River Water Distribution
The Lower Basin of the Colorado River will get less water from the waterway, as a lingering drought forces cutbacks in water allocations.
The cuts affect Arizona the most, which will get eighteen percent less water, based on projections for levels at federal reservoirs. Parts of Mexico is losing five percent of its allocation. Nevada’s total stays at seven percent, because it already gets far less water than other states.
California isn’t facing any cuts, because it has senior water rights.
The Colorado River is a major water source for seven western states, thirty Native American tribes, and two Mexican states.
In the Meantime, the Upper Basin states of Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and Utah will share far less water than usual, once the required amount is sent to the Lower Basin recipients.
That’s all according to Colorado Politics.
