The Colorado House declined to pursue an override of Gov. Jared Polis’ veto of a social media regulation bill Monday, three days after the Senate voted to bypass the governor’s rejection and after a weekend of intensive lobbying.
Rep. Andy Boesenecker, a Fort Collins Democrat, told House leadership early Monday afternoon that he wanted to table the vote on Senate Bill 86 until after the legislative session ends, effectively abandoning the override effort.
A few moments later, he told colleagues on the floor that the “votes are not here in this chamber” to match the Senate’s override.
The House needed 44 members — or two-thirds of the 65-member chamber — to support the bill and bypass Polis’ rejection. When the bill earlier passed the chamber, 46 House members had supported it, leaving little room for defections.
The bill, had it become law, would have required social media platforms to better police their platforms and ban users who violate the terms of service or use the platform to violate state law. It also would have required better cooperation with law enforcement. Supporters said it would protect Colorado’s children from extortion, sex predators, and illicit drug and gun sales.
But it drew First Amendment objections. In his veto letter, Polis wrote that the bill, despite its good intentions, “potentially subjects all Coloradans to stifling and unwarranted scrutiny of our constitutionally protected speech.”
Veto overrides are rare in the legislature given that governors act on many bills after lawmakers have adjourned each year’s session. It’s been 14 years since the legislature successfully overrode a governor’s veto of a budget spending instruction and decades since it overrode a veto on a standalone bill.
In defending SB-86, Boesenecker cited a person who thought they were buying the pain reliever Percocet online — only to overdose on fentanyl, a far more potent opioid, instead. Lax enforcement shouldn’t lead to “question marks at the end of that issue. There should only be a conviction,” he said.
“I recognize the veto might address some concerns of opponents of this bill, but it does not solve this issue for the families,” Boesenecker said.
The Chamber of Progress, a tech industry group, celebrated the bill’s death Monday.
“Civil rights and digital rights advocates repeatedly spoke out against this bill. Luckily, lawmakers finally listened,” Kouri Marshall, the group’s state and local director, said in a statement. “The bill would have almost certainly faced a legal challenge, and defending it wouldn’t be a great use of the state’s resources amid a billion-dollar budget shortfall.”
Backers of the bill started to rally against a potential veto two weeks ago and touted veto-proof majorities in each chamber that passed it. Polis pushed forward with the veto Thursday evening.
On Friday, Sen. Lindsey Daugherty, an Arvada Democrat and co-sponsor of the measure, won a vote in the Senate, 29-6, to override Polis. Before the vote, she had also secured an advisory opinion from Attorney General Phil Weiser defending the constitutionality of the proposal.
Daugherty said Monday morning that supporters had enough House votes to override the veto on Friday — the same day the Senate rejected Polis’ veto — and that she unsuccessfully asked House leadership to bring the vote forward then.
Speaker Julie McCluskie denied that she intentionally delayed the vote. The House was already scheduled for floor work all day Friday and it might have extended into the evening, she said.
“If anything, this may be indicative that the votes weren’t there,” she said of Boesenecker’s decision to forgo the override vote. “But regardless — I did not delay this intentionally.”
Boesenecker said he attributed the Friday delay to the volume of bills the House needed to process that day.
“The (vote) counts were all over the place,” he said of House support Friday. “It’s more than just passing the bill. (Overriding a veto) is ultimately a deeper question” that involves bucking Polis.
Daugherty said that Meta, Google and Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, a gun-rights group influential among House Republicans, all lobbied against the proposal over the weekend. She said the delay benefited the governor’s office.
Boesenecker said much of the lost support came from House Republicans amid RMGO’s opposition; the group celebrated the bill’s failure on social media Monday.
House Republicans met and discussed the bill Monday morning. Rep. Anthony Hartsook, the bill’s co-sponsor and a Parker Republican, declined to discuss the details of that conversation. Rep. Ty Winter, the House’s assistant minority leader, said the discussion was “spirited” but civil. Winter said his district was split on the bill and that he would’ve voted no had SB-86 come back for another vote.
But he said the lobbying from both supporters and opponents was “crazy” over the weekend. Republican Rep. Matt Soper, who opposed the bill, added that the governor’s office called him before Polis vetoed the measure to ensure that Soper didn’t flip his vote, should an override vote be brought forward.
Hartsook lamented the bill’s failure and the impact it would have on families who’d supported it.
“From the families’ perspective, they’re devastated,” he said. “We have go to take care of the families and that’s who we’re going to take care of.”
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