Live updates: Officials react to killed AI bill, hospitals-pharma fight nears end, immigrant protections finalized

With less than three days left until the Colorado legislature adjourns its regular session, lawmakers are back Monday to move several contentious bills through key votes. Several ongoing debates remain unresolved. Our reporters are providing updates on the action in the Capitol.

This story will be updated throughout the day.

6:17 p.m. update: The Senate began debating House Bill 1312 — the transgender-rights bill — late Monday afternoon. Debate was still going into the early evening, with both Democratic and Republican staff suggesting it could stretch to midnight amid Republican opposition.

That doesn’t happen often in the Senate, but it’s the end of session, every minute matters, and HB-1312 has had a contentious journey through the legislature. The bill’s sponsors further amended it early in the evening, striking the bill’s proposed shield-law provisions to ease its passage into law.

5:11 p.m. update: A cadre of Colorado’s top elected Democrats — responding after a Senate committee killed a bill this afternoon — called on the General Assembly to delay implementation of the state’s first-in-the-nation law regulating the use of artificial intelligence.

But with the legislative session so close to its required end, there’s no clear path to do that this legislative session. A bill needs a minimum of three days to become law. The legislature must adjourn by the end of the day Wednesday.

Gov. Jared Polis, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, Attorney General Phil Weiser, U.S. Reps. Joe Neguse and Brittany Pettersen, and Denver Mayor Mike Johnston all signed the letter imploring lawmakers to “take action now” to delay a set of AI regulations from taking effect in February. They asked for the rules to be delayed until January 2027 so lawmakers have time to hone them.

The regulations are part of a 2024 law. See the earlier update below for more on what they’ll do.

“Colorado communities in every corner of our state deserve the benefit of well-crafted artificial intelligence consumer protection law that more time for stakeholder engagement and policy development work will bring,” the letter states. “This pause will allow consumer advocates, Colorado’s business community, and other states to collaborate on a balanced, future-ready framework — one that protects privacy and fairness without stifling innovation or driving business away from our state.”

Earlier in the day, Sen. Robert Rodriguez, a Denver Democrat, voluntarily killed his bill that would have clarified some of the rules from the 2024 law. He also previewed an amendment to delay the law, but declined to introduce it.

Rodriguez, the Senate majority leader, did not immediately return a text message seeking comment about the joint letter early this evening. A spokesperson for Polis deferred to legislative leadership when asked if a path exists for delaying implementation before this session’s end.

4:25 p.m. update: One of the lengthiest, wealthiest and most-lobbied fights of the 2025 legislative session is on the verge of resolution.

We speak, of course, about the debate over 340B, a federal discount drug program. To recap: Hospitals ran a bill to ensure that pharmaceutical companies couldn’t limit the 340B program, and drug companies — together with labor unions — backed a separate proposal that would require transparency and establish guardrails around how the program’s benefits are spent.

Over the weekend, the House’s Health and Human Services Committee passed both bills. But the pharma bill was significantly amended in favor of the hospitals. That’s a win for the hospitals, and it sparked an argument between the committee’s chair and vice chair.

The chair, Rep. Kyle Brown, sponsored the pharma bill that was getting amended. The vice chair, Rep. Sheila Lieder, didn’t support the amendments and challenged Brown’s decision to send the bill directly to the House floor, rather than to the Appropriations Committee.

Fast forward to Monday. Both bills passed the House floor on an initial voice vote, with the supporters of the hospital bill speaking in favor of their one-time rival bill. But Lieder (and some other lawmakers) again raised their opposition, sought more amendments and tried to steer the pharma bill back to Appropriations.

Those efforts weren’t successful, and now the bills are one final House vote — and then some procedural agreement with the Senate — from moving to Gov. Jared Polis. As it stands, pharmaceutical companies won’t be able to limit the program in the state. Hospitals will be required to follow a degree of transparency and abide by guardrails on how the money is spent, but at a lower level than unions and the pharma industry had sought.

2:14 p.m. update: The Senate Judiciary Committee today rejected the renominations of the chair and vice chair of the state’s Commission on Judicial Discipline over concerns raised by the commission’s former executive director.

The vote doesn’t end chair Mindy Sooter’s and vice chair Jim Carpenter’s return to the commission; their nominations will still be taken up by the full Senate, albeit with a “disfavorable recommendation” from the chamber’s Judiciary Committee.

But the vote indicated that lawmakers were wary of waving Sooter and Carpenter through. The committee had delayed a vote on their renominations last week after Christopher Gregory, the commission’s former executive director, testified about a lengthy, anonymous complaint alleging broad misconduct within the state’s judicial system. The complaint was previously covered by the Denver Gazette.

Gregory told lawmakers that he wanted a federal investigation into the complaint. Sooter then said the allegations in the complaint were investigated “very seriously” and were set aside.

Still, the concerns — which come amid a broader recent focus on judicial misconduct in the state — were significant enough to slow Sooter and Carpenter’s return to the commission. Sen. Matt Ball, a Denver Democrat who ultimately supported the nominations, said the allegations were “troubling and I think we should look into them.”

“I would encourage this committee or another body of the legislature to hold a hearing, perhaps when we come back for next session, to look into this more,” he said. “It’s not clear to me that the allegations are baseless. There’s smoke, I think there might be fire.”

1:28 p.m. update: A long-expected bill that would have adjusted Colorado’s first-in-the-nation artificial intelligence law died unexpectedly this afternoon.

Senate Bill 318 sought to adjust rules set by a 2024 law, also sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez, to address concerns from labor, government, business, industry and civic groups about the new regulations. Instead, barring some extraordinary development, the new rules passed last year will go into effect early next year despite protests that they will stifle the AI industry.

The 2024 law had been a starting point, Rodriguez said. As a first-in-the-nation effort, Rodriguez said he didn’t expect the new regulations to be perfect. That was a view shared by Gov. Jared Polis, who said in a signing statement last spring that stakeholders must use the time before the law took effect to “fine-tune the provisions” in the law.

Under the 2024 law, companies that use AI to make decisions around hiring, leasing and other “consequential” decisions must disclose they’re using AI and give people explanations for rejections. It also seeks to broadly limit AI-based discrimination.

This year’s SB-318 initially sought to address some concerns that the 2024 law was written in a way that might hold back the burgeoning industry. It would have exempted some uses of AI, such as document sorting, spellchecking and cybersecurity, from the upcoming regulations. 

With the legislative calendar winding down this week, Rodriguez said he needed more time to work with the affected parties — until he decided he didn’t. Rodriguez, a Denver Democrat, had initially planned to amend the bill simply to delay implementation of the new rules until April of next year, giving lawmakers more time to tweak the regulations.

Instead, he killed the bill altogether as it was up for a hearing in the Senate Business, Labor and Technology Committee. The regulations from the 2024 law will still go into effect Feb. 1, just a few weeks after lawmakers convene for the 2026 session.

“While I’ve made a good-faith effort toward balance for consumers and businesses — which is a hard line to draw — both sides were not happy with the bill,” Rodriguez said. “I continue the work. The resistance lives on.”

The Center for Democracy and Technology, a civil liberties nonprofit that worked on an AI task force, applauded Rodriguez for killing the bill versus stripping any of the protections provided in the 2024 law.

“(The bill) represented a good-faith effort to answer the concerns raised by industry and included the vast majority of reforms requested by industry participants,” President Alexandra Reeve Givens said in a statement. “Sen. Rodriguez and his colleagues in the General Assembly did the right thing by refusing to eliminate or delay the bare minimum of protections that Colorado’s workers and consumers should be willing to accept, even though that meant the failure of SB25-318.”

11:59 a.m. update: The House gave initial approval to Senate Bill 5, the pro-union bill, late this morning. That puts the proposal one House vote away from Gov. Jared Polis’ desk.

The bill is advancing as talks with Polis’ office and members of the business community collapsed over the weekend. Its imminent passage puts it on a collision course with the governor, who has said he will veto it unless supporters reach a deal with business leaders.

During debate, several Democratic lawmakers urged Polis to sign SB-5. Rep. Jennifer Bacon, one of the bill’s sponsors, said Polis, as the “figurehead of the Democratic Party,” should sign off on a Democratic-priority bill.

In a Saturday statement, Polis spokeswoman Shelby Wieman said that negotiators got close to a deal on SB-5. Other sources told The Denver Post that labor groups accepted Polis’ last proposal but that business groups rejected it, instead sticking by their third and final offer.

Wieman’s statement did not indicate if the governor still intends to veto SB-5.

“Governor Polis wants to acknowledge how much he has appreciated the robust conversation,” Wieman wrote. “He hopes both sides find a way forward in the future that reflects our shared goals of prosperity, fairness and opportunities for workers.”

Colorado House begins debate on labor union bill after negotiations collapse with business leaders

11:21 a.m. update: A bill that would increase protections for undocumented immigrants in Colorado will head to Gov. Jared Polis after the Senate voted to accept House changes to Senate Bill 276.

The bill would remove a requirement from state law that undocumented immigrants sign affidavits for in-state college tuition or driver’s licenses and would allow people who pleaded guilty to low-level offenses to petition for the removal of the conviction if they were unaware of its immigration implications. It also would bar jails from holding defendants past their normal releases to assist with immigration enforcement, and more.

Sen. Julie Gonzales, a Denver Democrat and sponsor, warned that “we are in a time where due process is no longer a guarantee, depending on the color of your skin or where you might have been born.” She cited President Donald Trump’s Sunday TV interview in which he said “I don’t know” if noncitizens have due process protections afforded by the U.S. Constitution.

“If the Constitution protects us all, then we in Colorado have the opportunity with this vote today to demonstrate and affirm that the Constitution does, in fact, protect us all — that due process does extend to everyone, no asterisks allowed,” Gonzales said.

The bill passed on a party-line 23-12 vote. Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeen, a Monument Republican, said the bill went “beyond due process” and singled out its allowing people to “wipe away a prior guilty plea.”

“There are elements that provide privilege and advantage that I do not believe are appropriate,” Lundeen said.