DENVER – Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed into law a transgender-rights bill last week after it was amended numerous times, but the changes weren’t enough to avoid a free-speech lawsuit.
A host of parental-rights groups sued Monday to block the law, known as House Bill 1312, arguing that it violates the First and Fourteenth amendments by adding deadnaming and misgendering to the list of punishable offenses under the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act.
“H.B. 25-1312 was passed for the very purpose of suppressing traditional views on sex and gender and punishing those who refuse to address transgender-identifying individuals using so-called chosen names and preferred pronouns,” said the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for Colorado.
Bringing the lawsuit were Defending Education; the Colorado Parent Advocacy Network; Protect Kids Colorado, and Do No Harm, all of which operate in Colorado and intentionally use birth names and sex-based pronouns in their advocacy against gender ideology.
“They do not want to be forced to affirm — through the use of pronouns, names, or other language — that a biological man is actually a woman or vice versa,” the 58-page motion said. “Yet that is precisely what H.B. 25-1312 requires.”
The legal challenge comes as the latest headache for Democrats since introducing “The Kelly Loving Act,” named after one of the victims of the 2022 Club Q shooting.
As originally proposed, the bill would have required courts to consider “deadnaming” and “misgendering” as forms of coercive control in child-custody cases, but that section was deleted after an outcry over parental rights that saw more than 700 people descend on the state Capitol to testify.
The bill was also amended to remove the terms “misgendering” and “deadnaming.” Instead, it adds “chosen name” and “how the individual chooses to be addressed” to CADA’s definition of “gender expression.”
“Thus, it is now a ‘discriminatory practice’ under Colorado law to refer to transgender-identifying individuals by their birth name (i.e., not their ‘chosen name’) or to use biological pronouns (i.e., not their preferred pronouns) in a place of public accommodation,” the lawsuit said.
.@DefendingEd is joining forces with @DoNoHarm, @ProtectKidsCO, and @CPANColorado to challenge this unconstitutional law and defend the right to speak freely.
More here: https://t.co/zmab8BBO5p
— Nicki Neily (@nickineily) May 19, 2025
Mr. Polis signed the bill Friday, saying it contains “a few provisions that make it easier to reflect the gender identity of folks,” but that “a lot of the controversial parts were removed during the [legislative] process,” according to Colorado Politics.
This isn’t the first time Colorado has landed in a legal battle over its anti-discrimination law.
Christian cakeshop owner Jack Phillips and website designer Lorie Smith both won landmark cases at the U.S. Supreme Court against the state’s enforcement of CADA.
“Colorado can’t seem to stop losing at the Supreme Court on constitutional challenges to its anti-discrimination laws,” said Sarah Parshall Perry, Defending Education vice president. “And yet, Governor Polis has nevertheless signed another patently unconstitutional iteration of its Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act — something that can only be described as an exercise of remarkable hubris. HB 25-1312 muzzles parents, doctors, and associations alike if they fail to hew to the government’s preferred gender orthodoxy.”
Democratic state Sen. Faith Winter, the bill’s sponsor, said at a Senate hearing earlier this month that she believes “this bill is going to save lives” even in its amended form.
“We believe that this bill is in a good place. It provides clarity, strengthening protections,” she said. “Trans rights should not be controversial. But some people make it out to be. We must be strong and on the side of protecting people, even when it’s uncomfortable.”
The bill, which took effect immediately, also says that school policies on student-name changes must be “inclusive of all reasons that a student might adopt a name that differs from the student’s legal name.”
