Ballot Question 3A gives Aurora voters final say on whether to keep pit bull ban

Aurora’s decades-long debate over whether to ban pit bulls should finally find resolution in the Nov. 5 election, when voters will have the final say on whether the controversial dog breed should be legal in Colorado’s third-largest city.

The Aurora City Council referred Ballot Question 3A to voters earlier this year. Certain types of the breed were legalized for ownership within city limits by the city’s elected leaders three years ago.

That decision, however, was challenged in court by a resident who asserted that only voters, and not the City Council, could overturn the city’s previous pit bull ban. A judge agreed in March, ruling that because the voters had chosen to keep the ban in place during a 2014 citywide election, only the voters were authorized to change the policy.

Aurora is one of the last remaining communities in Colorado still mulling the status of pit bulls, which have been implicated in several attacks on people over the years. Most notably, a 10-year-old Aurora boy was mauled by three pit bulls in his backyard in 2005. He lost his left arm and sustained face injuries.

The city had enacted a pit bull ban just a week before the attack.

What would 3A do if passed?

A yes vote would do away with the city’s breed-specific ban and allow people in Aurora to keep three varieties of pit bull — the American pit bull terrier, the American Staffordshire terrier and the Staffordshire bull terrier — within city limits.

What have other metro cities done?

Denver eliminated its 30-year-old pit bull ban in 2020 with a vote at the ballot box. Castle Rock did the same two years earlier. Commerce City and Lone Tree have also recently done away with pit bull bans.