Colorado Democrats blinked on a hotly disputed bill expanding transgender rights, removing a provision that would put parents who use the wrong pronouns at risk of losing custody following a state and national outcry over parental rights and free speech.
The state Senate Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to approve House Bill 1312 after doing major surgery on the bill following an eight-hour hearing that saw an estimated 800 people flood the Capitol in Denver.
The biggest change: removing Section II, which would have made judges consider misgendering or deadnaming, or threatening to publish material related to a child’s gender-transition treatment, as forms of “coercive control” in custody disputes.
The committee also struck Section V, which would have let students pick from any of the options listed on their schools’ dress codes, as well as Section VIII, which would ban publishing material that misgender or deadname transgender individuals under the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act.
Still included is a provision making it a civil rights violation to “repeatedly” and “purposefully” refer to transgender people by their “deadname,” meaning their birth name, or to “misgender” them by using the wrong pronouns in places such as work or school.
The bill also includes a “shield law” that prohibits state agencies from cooperating with out-of-state custody orders removing children from a parent for assisting in obtaining gender-transition treatment.
Democratic state Rep. Faith Winter, the bill’s sponsor, said 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 at the end of the hearing, which stretched past midnight. “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 amendments failed to sway Republicans, who opposed the bill on a 5-2 party-line vote. The measure now goes to the Senate floor, but the clock is ticking, given that the Legislature is scheduled to adjourn Wednesday.
We are told HB-1312 has the highest number of individuals signed up to testify on a single bill in Senate history.
Thank you to everyone who came out tonight to make your voice heard.
Senate Republicans will always stand up for Colorado families. https://t.co/7Ur1rPc433 pic.twitter.com/V02CMWugl9
— Colorado Senate Republicans (@ColoSenGOP) May 1, 2025
Named the Kelly Loving Act for a victim of the 2022 Club Q mass shooting, the bill created an uproar after it passed the Democrat-controlled House last month, spurring fear that state courts would strip children from their parents for being insufficiently woke on transgender rights.
“I don’t think that there should be any shock that we had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people come and voice their concern over losing their children, because that’s what Section II did,” said Republican state Sen. Lisa Frizell at the hearing.
She chided Democrats for creating “terror,” saying she was approached by a father at Sam’s Club in Castle Rock who told her, “I think I have to leave this state because I’m afraid of what’s going to happen to my kids.”
Most of the opposition at the hearing was centered on Section II, which was removed, but the bill’s Democratic sponsors didn’t disclose their amendments until minutes before the public testimony began.
Democratic state Sen. Dylan Roberts said that as many as 99% of the calls, emails and comments he received were about Section II, adding that he would have opposed the bill if the family-law provision had not been erased.
“If that hasn’t been made clear yet, we just adopted an amendment to completely strike Section II,” Mr. Roberts said at the close of the hearing. “The bill’s sponsors, to anybody with concerns about this, have committed that that is how they intend the bill to stay. They will not be put back in at a later date. That is how the bill will remain. No more Section II.”
Republican state Sen. John Carson called the bill “better but still bad,” as well as unnecessary, given that the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act already protects people based on gender identity and gender expression.
The Republicans’ House minority leader, Rose Pugliese, raised concerns about an amendment that lets individuals change the sex designation on their birth certificates or driver’s licenses more than once without a court order. The current law requires a court order for any follow-up changes to sex designations.
Ms. Winter said the measure was intended to help those having trouble getting passports and student loans because of their “X” sex designation, but Republicans saw other problems.
“They included language that said you are no longer required to get a court order in order to change your name or get a government ID, even if you are here in the country unlawfully,” Ms. Pugliese said on Fox News. “So that jeopardizes public safety in a different way.”
