Every legislative session in Colorado is dominated by a set of themes. The lawmaking term that ended Wednesday was no different.
The Colorado Capitol News Alliance, a collaboration between The Colorado Sun, Colorado Public Radio and KUNC, gathered to summarize what happened at the Capitol this year.
Here’s what we found.
Democrats in the legislature defied Jared Polis unlike ever before
It’s no secret that Jared Polis takes a hands-on approach to the legislative process. His staffers make sure lawmakers know when the governor has issues with a bill. And Polis is quick to issue a veto threat.
For his first six years as governor, that led to some behind-the-scenes grumbling among Democrats in the legislature. But the disagreements rarely spilled out into public view and Democratic lawmakers rarely defied him.
That changed in 2025.
The first public crack in the relationship came with Senate Bill 25-086, a bipartisan measure that would have required social media companies to police their platforms for illegal content, as well as report on how minors use those sites.
Polis said those requirements would violate Coloradans’ privacy rights. He vetoed the bill.
Supporters of the measure didn’t allow the veto to stand without a fight. They held a rare override vote in the Senate and were successful.
“I think there are some policies that we're realizing that we just don't agree upon,” said state Sen. Lindsey Daugherty, an Arvada Democrat, and a lead sponsor of Senate Bill 86.
Daugherty said lawmakers aren’t backing down as often when it comes to running bills that the governor may oppose.
But then the override moved to the House, and after a weekend of last-minute lobbying, the lead House sponsor backed off, saying he didn’t have the votes to complete the override and giving his colleagues a way to avoid going on record defying Polis. The override vote was postponed until after the session ended, effectively killing the bill once and for all.
The close call was a clear rebuke of the governor and hinted at more fissures to come as Polis nears the end of his tenure leading the state. (The governor is term-limited come early 2027.)
Senate Bill 86 wasn’t the only instance of Democrats ignoring the governor’s clear directives this year. They also shut down his efforts to revise Colorado’s first-in-the-nation artificial intelligence law aimed to provide more consumer rights and protections against bias in AI systems over consequential decisions, like banking, health care and hiring.
Even though he signed the law last year, the governor asked for changes before the policy takes effect in 2026. But when that measure, Senate Bill 25-318, finally arrived in the final days of the 2025 session, the tech industry and the business community, Polis included, took issue with with it.
Instead of trying to work through all the complaints, the lead sponsor of the bill, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez, simply shelved it Monday. He worried his opponents would derail the underlying policy and make changes he disagreed with.
Still, the move to kill the bill surprised the governor and led him to join forces with other top Democrats — Attorney General Phil Weiser, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and U.S. Reps. Joe Neguse and Brittany Pettersen — to send a letter to the legislature pleading with lawmakers to extend the law’s implementation deadline to Jan. 1, 2027.
They refused — despite a last-minute bid in the House to try to extend it — and now the original artificial intelligence law so loathed by the tech community is set to go into effect in February 2026.
“This is so irrational and so unenforceable,” said Bryan Leach, CEO and founder of Denver-based Ibotta. Meanwhile, consumer groups say guardrails on AI programs that have the potential to change the course of people’s lives need to be done sooner, not later.
Senate Bill 25-005 may be the greatest example of Democrats in the legislature defying Polis. The measure would abolish a requirement in the Colorado Labor Peace Act that 75% of workers at a company sign off before unions can negotiate with businesses over union security. Union security is the term for when workers are forced to pay fees for collective bargaining representation — whether or not they are members of their workplace’s union.
Colorado is the only state that requires a vote like that on top of the simple majority vote needed to form a union in the first place.
The governor has said since the early days of the legislative session that he would not sign a measure eliminating the second vote under any circumstances. The legislature, after failing to find a compromise with business, sent him Senate Bill 5 anyway. They think it will be politically risky for a White House-curious Democratic governor to reject the measure. Labor leaders are threatening to lead a national campaign opposing Polis if he vetoes the measure.
“I would think as the figurehead of the Democratic Party, he will do what Democrats ask him to do — and what Democrats worked on incessantly,” state Rep. Jennifer Bacon, a Denver Democrat and lead sponsor of this bill, said on the House floor. “I have faith that he will do it. He will sign this bill.”
Polis confirmed Thursday that he plans to veto Senate Bill 5.
Rodriguez, who was a lead sponsor of both the AI and Labor Peace Act bills, said the legislature’s defiance of Polis was simply the General Assembly doing its job.
“Lawmakers made the decisions, not the governor,” he said.
The governor didn’t take lawmakers’ dissent lying down. After the legislature axed his signature effort to drive down the cost of homeowners insurance, Polis’ office took Democrats to task.
“It’s disappointing to see Democrats join with Republicans to not take action to help Coloradans facing out-of-control home insurance costs and increase competition for Coloradans,” said Shelby Wieman, a spokeswoman for Polis. “In broad daylight, the legislature failed to help save people money when they need it most.”
At a news conference Thursday where Polis reflected on the legislative session, he downplayed his Capitol losses this year.
“We got a lot of the items that we laid out in the State of the State done and those that we didn't, we plan to continue to work on in the future,” he said. “I think this session was much better for us than two sessions ago, when our whole housing agenda failed at the end of session in one bill.”
Colorado Democrats vs. Trump
President Donald Trump loomed large over the 2025 legislative session, with Democratic lawmakers spending time and energy responding to his second term.
Some of their pushback was symbolic, like a Senate resolution in February that denounced Trump’s use of the wartime Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to justify deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members.
But other efforts were more substantial.
Senate Bill 25-276, aimed at adding deportation protections for Colorado immigrants, poses the most immediate conflict with the federal government. It passed the legislature days after the Trump administration sued Denver and Colorado officials over their so-called “sanctuary laws.” It’s now awaiting Polis’ signature or veto.
The measure builds on state laws passed in the past few years limiting state and local cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Senate Bill 276 expands prohibitions on data sharing and requires local policies about when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents can access schools, libraries and other public buildings.
“We are reaffirming our commitment to making sure that, when ICE does come to Colorado, that they are still doing so as much as possible within the Constitutional confines,” said state Rep. Lorena Garcia, an Adams County Democrat and one of the lead sponsors of the bill. “We’re just saying, ‘It is important that you operate within the confines of the law.’ No one is above the law.”
Republicans uniformly opposed the bill, arguing it would grant unequal protections to immigrants who lack legal status and directly conflict with federal law and lead the Trump administration to pull more federal money out of the state.
“Immigration law is specifically listed in the Constitution as being enumerated power of Congress and the President to enforce,” said Rep. Matt Soper, R-Delta. “It’s important that we look out after the entire state of Colorado and that involves dollars that come to our state from the federal government. Senate Bill 276, as amended, will result in the loss of federal tax dollars coming to us.”
Trump is already targeting Denver and Colorado over immigration. A few days before the bill passed, the administration filed a lawsuit against Denver and Colorado officials for the state’s so-called “sanctuary policies”
Legislative Democrats also responded to Trump’s second presidency by instituting more protections for abortion providers and their patients from out-of-state investigations and prosecutions. They passed a bill requiring emergency rooms to provide abortions when necessary to save a patient. And in response to Trump’s decision to pick Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist, to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, lawmakers moved to update Colorado's vaccination requirements for public schools.
In the realm of transgender rights, the General Assembly passed a bill requiring health insurance companies to cover gender-affirming care. Another measure, House Bill 25-1312, aimed to shore up protections for trans people, but was watered down significantly to remove the most controversial provisions. It no longer requires family courts to consider a parent’s refusal to recognize their child’s transgender identity when making custody determinations, which was a flashpoint for opponents who said the policy would infringe on parents’ rights, especially when it comes to personal values and religious beliefs. Sponsors also struck a shield law provision aimed at protecting out-of-state parents who bring a child to Colorado to receive gender-affirming care.
National LGBTQ legal groups said they were concerned the original measure wasn’t robust enough to withstand legal challenges.
“I'm disappointed in how mainstream groups bogarted this bill. I don't know how better to say it,” said Garcia, the main sponsor.
“I think it's also a result of the real fear that people have with what the administration can do to people, whether it's funding or rolling back rights or disappearing people. The threats are real, the fear is real, but our pushback also needs to be real, and I don't feel like we pushed hard enough against what the administration is doing.”
It does try to make school dress and name policies work better for trans students, makes it easier to change a person’s gender marker on state IDs, and defines deadnaming and misgendering as part of the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act.
In a more immediate sense, Democrats are preparing for more legal battles with the Trump administration. The state budget earmarked $600,000 to the Attorney General’s Office for its multitude of lawsuits against the president’s executive orders, and lawmakers set aside another $4 million to cover the legal costs of defending the state against any efforts to withhold federal funding.
But they did not put any contingency plans in place for possible cuts to Colorado’s Medicaid funding, which state budget experts say are likely under congressional Republicans’ spending plan. If that happens, state lawmakers may well have to reconvene later this year for a special legislative session to keep the budget in balance.
Budget gymnastics, take one
State lawmakers managed to close a $1.2 billion budget shortfall without major cuts to health care, K-12 or higher education.
But it wasn’t easy.
The financial crunch overshadowed much of the legislative session, preventing lawmakers from creating new programs or increasing spending on major priorities like housing.
It also led them to scale back recent investments in roads and social services. They cut more than $200 million from state highway projects and transit grants. They slowed down the rollout of the state’s new school finance formula — a major bipartisan deal struck a year ago that is supposed to deliver more funding to K-12 schools. And they redirected hundreds of millions more from local governments, state cash funds and taxpayer refunds in order to avoid deeper cuts to core state services.
But even after all the cuts and balancing maneuvers, the six members of the Joint Budget Committee said they didn’t come close to solving the structural problem driving the budget deficit: The costs of state services — especially health care — are increasing faster than state tax revenue is allowed to grow under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.
Budget writers say their task will only get harder next legislative session. Many of the moves they made to balance the 2025-26 spending plan, which starts July 1, will only provide temporary savings.
“This year is bad,” state Rep. Shannon Bird, a Westminster Democrat, said during a budget hearing in April. “Next year and subsequent years — absent fiscal change — will only get worse.”
To solve the long-term problem, they warned, lawmakers may have to cut spending on Medicaid, the federal health insurance program for low-income residents. That would either mean covering fewer health services or kicking people off it entirely. The decision won’t be easy. The state’s most vulnerable populations — low-income seniors, children and people with disabilities — make up the majority of what the state spends on health care.
One solution Democrats see to the budget crunch is changing the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. Their efforts at the Capitol in 2025 — including directing the legislature's lawyers to file a lawsuit seeking to invalidate the 1992 constitutional amendment adopted by voters — fell short.
The resolution that would have led to the lawsuit died on the calendar. Another measure seeking to get around TABOR’s cap on government growth and spending was never introduced.
But Democrats plan on doubling down next year.
Expect the lawsuit push to be back. So could the TABOR cap legislation, which would refer a measure to the ballot asking voters to let the state keep 10% of TABOR refunds to pay for rural hospitals and transportation projects. And outside the Capitol, Democratic allies are working on ballot plans of their own to raise tax revenue — and they could ask voters to change or dismantle the constitutional amendment in the process.
Democrats pass new slate of gun restrictions
Few predicted heading into this year’s legislative session that guns would be a major theme, especially after the General Assembly rejected bills that would have banned a broad swath of semiautomatic weapons, referred to in the measures as "assault weapons," in 2023 and 2024.
Democrats seemed to have checked off everything on their gun restrictions to-do list. A waiting period for firearm purchases. Making the minimum age to purchase guns 21. A so-called red flag law. Enacting safe-storage requirements for weapons. Making it easier to sue gun manufacturers.
But Democratic lawmakers this year — over the fierce objections of Republicans — succeeded in pushing even further, including passing one of the most stringent restrictions on purchasing firearms in the nation.
As introduced, Senate Bill 25-003 would have banned outright the manufacture, sale, purchase and transfer of most semiautomatic rifles and shotguns, as well as some semiautomatic handguns, that can accept detachable ammunition magazines. It was written to have a similar effect to a ban on so-called assault weapons.
However, the measure was dramatically pared back in the Senate to appease Polis. By the time it reached his desk in early April, Senate Bill 3 still banned the manufacture of those weapons in Colorado, but it offered a path to purchase the guns for people who get vetted, take a class and pass a test. It also offered carve-outs for certain firearms.
The law, signed by Polis on April 10, will take effect in August 2026.
Legislative Democrats didn’t stop there. They also passed bills imposing new rules for gun shows, raising the minimum age to buy ammunition to 21, and allowing people to voluntarily add their names “do not sell” registry as a means of suicide prevention.
State Sen. Tom Sullivan, a Centennial Democrat and lead sponsor of Senate Bill 3, said there were so many gun regulations measures before the legislature this year that supporters had some issues coordinating to make sure they showed up in force at the right places at the right times.
Sullivan, whose son was murdered in the 2012 Aurora theater shooting, said more gun measures will be brought next year. He’s particularly interested in taking a harder look at lost and stolen firearms and whether the legislature's efforts to address that issue have worked.
Dealing with the sexual assault evidence backlog
A the start of the legislative session in January, the scope of the state’s backlog of untested sexual assault kits came to light during an oversight hearing.
The backlog of more than 1,400 cases meant it took on average a year and a half to test the evidence. It has had serious real-world consequences. The delays have been extremely painful for sexual assault victims, make it harder for legal cases to succeed and are potentially leaving dangerous people on the loose in the community.
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation blamed the backlog on a shortage of DNA scientists, combined with the need to divert half that staff to re-examine thousands of cases handled by Yvonne “Missy” Woods, a former CBI lab leader who is charged with manipulating DNA in cases for nearly three decades.
Legislators heard emotional testimony throughout the session on the impact the delay has had on sexual assault survivors. One of those people was state Rep. Jenny Willford, D-Northglenn, who says she was sexually assaulted by a rideshare driver last year. She recently received the results of her sexual assault evidence after more than a year, but said the wait was excruciating.
“It was really difficult to wait as long as I did and to feel like that result was hanging over me and that I didn't know if there would be DNA evidence or not,” Willford said.
Lawmakers are trying to tackle the problem through a series of bills.
Senate Bill 25-105, already signed by Polis, will give the Colorado Department of Public Safety $3 million of unspent money originally dedicated to reviewing Woods’ cases to outsource sexual assault kits to third-party labs. Part of that money will address other needs at the bureau.
The legislature also wants to set up a system to try to get a better handle on things moving forward. Senate Bill 25-304 would create a panel to review sexual assault forensic medical evidence to make recommendations to the legislature. If the bill is signed, the group would look at the data and the backlog, try to find possible blind spots and keep an eye on what’s happening at the state labs so turnaround times don’t balloon again without lawmakers really knowing.
Lawmakers are also trying to address other systemic issues within CBI. House Bill 25-1275 would require a CBI lab employee to report any misconduct they are aware of and require a state investigation into those allegations. It would also set up a process to inform criminal defendants and others affected by the misconduct.
