Misgendering is now officially an illegal, discriminatory act under Colorado law.
On Friday, the state’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, quietly signed the “Concerning Legal Protections for Transgender Individuals” without issuing a statement or holding a ceremony.
The law is drastically pared down from its original version, which declared that parents in custody battles who misgender or “deadname” their child were guilty of “coercive control” and could lose their child. Under Colorado law, “coercive control” is a serious category that includes things like threatening to kill someone.
But that provision is not in the bill Polis signed, thanks to Colorado parents, who came out in force to fight it. More than 700 Coloradans signed up to testify against the bill, and tens of thousands more signed petitions against it.
Ultimately, Democrats were forced to strike the radical custody battle language before the bill became law. Some Democrat lawmakers even backed down and refused to vote for the measure unless the child custody clause was removed.
Still, the new law bars Colorado courts from cooperating with other states with laws that protect children from parents who want to give them transgender hormones or surgeries. It also requires schools that have dress codes and other policies that allow children to use a transgender name or wear the school uniform of the opposite gender.
The bill also allows people to change the gender marker on their driver’s license three times, up from just once.
“This bill was an attack on parental rights,” Colorado House Minority Leader Rose Pugliese told The Daily Wire.
“And what we saw were people rising up, which I think is great. Our grassroots movement was really strong, and parents came out,” she said. “This is an issue that transcends party lines. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Republican, a Democrat, or unaffiliated. Nobody wants the government to be raising our children or telling us how to raise our children.”
Pugliese said Colorado’s Democratic majority was able to use House rules to “shut our voices down,” explaining that they did not have the usual number of hours to debate the bill.
Democrats introduced the bill quietly — late on a Friday evening in March — and quickly pushed it through committee, forcing Republicans and parental rights advocates to scramble to organize testimony and protests.
“So I think that also engaged people because they felt like even their representatives couldn’t have that conversation,” Pugliese said. “I think by the time it got to the Senate, between the national attention that it received and how much attention we received for our voices being silenced by the majority, people were definitely way more engaged.”
However, “bad bills never go away,” she warned.
“It is just a building block for where they really want to go in the future,” she said, urging parents to continue speaking out because “your voices are so needed at the Capitol.”
This bill just got introduced late Friday evening & we just found out today it’s scheduled for Judiciary Committee TOMORROW. And it’s RADICAL.
No time to analyze it. No time to coordinate testimony. No time to talk with stakeholders or constituents. #coleg #copolitics pic.twitter.com/YvWkJVghhq
— Rep. Jarvis Caldwell (@RepCaldwell) April 1, 2025
During heated debate on the House floor, Republicans warned Democrats that Colorado parents would not go quietly.
“When you tell a parent they can’t have their child because they’re not affirming that, you’re going to see a state blow up,” State Representative Scott Bottoms, a Republican, said on the floor as the bill was debated.
“It’s going to blow up in this state when you start taking kids from their parents. They’re not going to allow that to continue,” Bottoms warned.
Stop everything you're doing and watch this Colorado Republican GO OFF against a bill codifying transgender ideology into law. pic.twitter.com/lm3PbIjajo
— Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) April 4, 2025
But the fight is not over yet, parental rights advocates say.
Erin Lee, executive director of Protect Kids Colorado, warned that Colorado family courts already favor the parent who affirms a child’s transgender identity.
“I’ve worked with a handful of dads here in Colorado and in other states whose exes have come to Colorado specifically for those protections, knowing that the family court system will always side with the parent who is affirming of the new identity,” Lee told The Daily Wire.
Lee and her husband previously sued her 12-year-old daughter’s Colorado school district for allegedly secretly transitioning her. She cautioned that Child Protective Services can even be “weaponized” against two-parent homes that are not affirming of a child’s transgender identity, not just custody situations.
Lee also explained that, ironically, parental rights advocates might have been able to fight the bill in court if the child custody clause had been left in.
“What they’ve done now is they’ve made it even harder for us to stop what’s already practiced here in Colorado,” she said.
However, Lee said she thinks the transgender discrimination bill was a major turning point.
“[I think] we will see lawsuits, we will see ballot measures, we will see people not complying with the law across the board, and we’ll see organization of these grassroots orgs like we’ve never seen before in Colorado. I do think it’s the turning point,” she said.
Pastor J. Chase Davis of The Well Church in Boulder organized two rallies at the Colorado State Capitol against the transgender bill, and he agreed that the fight is far from over.
“The House Democrats all voted in favor of the pre-amended version of this bill, so their agenda is out in the open, the cat’s out of the bag, they’ve let known their intentions,” Davis told The Daily Wire.
“And here’s the deal, they’ve already been running this play in multiple places in Colorado, Jefferson County, down in Durango,” Davis noted.
In Durango earlier this year, one mother found the police would not help her retrieve her 17-year-old daughter from the house of her daughter’s former math teacher and trans-identifying husband, who had taken the girl into her home.
In Jefferson County, school officials allegedly helped a 17-year-old girl lie on a federal form that she was homeless and hid it from her parents so she could move in with a teacher with whom she had an inappropriate relationship, according to investigators.
“Christians need to get involved. We don’t need to be afraid of getting involved politically. We don’t need to be afraid of all the names they’re going to call you. Just stand for God’s truth, stand for the truth of reality in the public square, and I think there’s a lot of positive momentum that can come from that, and I think we can be an inspiration to one another,” Davis said.
Colorado has other controversial bills on transgender ideology coming down the pike.
A bill that was sent to the governor last week but is not yet signed bans health insurers from limiting so-called “necessary” transgender medical services like hormone treatments and surgeries.
