Manny Rutinel Gave $12M of Taxpayer Funds to Prisoners for Sex Change Surgeries
Democrat Meatless Manny Rutinel “voted to give out nearly $12.3 million in taxpayer funding for prisoners’ ‘transgender healthcare,’ including sex-change surgeries.”
“Meatless Manny Rutinel has spent millions of taxpayer dollars on sex change surgeries for prisoners. Rutinel continues to prove he is too extreme for Colorado’s 8th congressional district and that he can’t be trusted with hard-earned taxpayer funds.” – NRCC Spokesman Zach Bannon
You can read the full article here or see excerpts below:
Colorado House Candidate Manny Rutinel Backed $12 Million in Taxpayer-Funded ‘Transgender Healthcare’ for Prisoners
Washington Free Beacon
Ethan Barton
July 10, 2026
The Democratic nominee in Colorado’s competitive Eighth Congressional District, Manny Rutinel, voted to give out nearly $12.3 million in taxpayer funding for prisoners’ “transgender healthcare,” including sex-change surgeries.
The appropriations bills passed by the state’s House of Representatives over the past three sessions included a line item for “transgender healthcare” within the budget for the Department of Corrections. Rutinel, a state representative, joined his fellow Democrats to vote in favor of the legislation, with just one Republican defecting each year.
The budgets provided $5.3 million in 2024 and again in 2025, then decreased to $1.6 million this year as Colorado had to close a $1.5 billion budget deficit. The first vote came just weeks after the state agreed to provide medical procedures, including surgeries, to all transgender prisoners as part of a consent decree it signed to settle a lawsuit brought by some 400 convicted biological men who identify as women. The settlement also allows biological men to be housed in female-only facilities.
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Rutinel’s budget votes aren’t the first times the Democrat supported handing out tax dollars to law-breakers or supporting transgender causes.
He voted in 2025 for a program that gave taxpayer-funded health care to illegal immigrant “pregnant persons.” It was expected to cost less than $15 million, but ballooned to nearly $105 million. The budget bill Rutinel supported this year instituted a 2-percent cut to Medicaid health care providers as part of an effort to close Colorado’s deficit, but it preserved the program, albeit with benefit reductions and enrollment caps.
Earlier this year, Rutinel voted for legislation that ordered courts to consider whether a parent uses their child’s preferred pronouns when ruling on custody battles. The bill’s original form, which Rutinel supported, categorized “deadnaming” and “misgendering” as coercive control.
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