Colorado bill targeting guns made with 3-D printers clears first hurdle

Colorado Democrats this week advanced a measure that would ban 3-D printing of guns, the latest effort to restrict firearm access in a legislative session that has otherwise lacked the high-profile efforts of years past.

House Bill 1144 would bar the manufacture of firearms, key gun components, large-capacity magazines and rapid-fire devices using 3-D printers. It would also prohibit the possession of instructions to manufacture guns or their components with 3-D printers or automated precision milling machines with the intent to fabricate them. It would prohibit the distribution of those instructions, too.

During a hearing that ended Wednesday night, supporters characterized the measure as aiming to fill gaps left by a 2023 law banning so-called ghost guns, or firearms without serial numbers, and to align the intent of state law with rapidly changing technology. Opponents countered that the bill was duplicative of those prior efforts but might cast an even wider net to criminalize people unnecessarily.

“It is a bipartisan issue of law and order, ensuring that bad actors can’t use technology to evade background checks and serialization laws,” Rep. Andrew Boesenecker, a Fort Collins Democrat, said.
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Faced with veto threat, Colorado lawmakers remove family court section from trans youth bill

Colorado lawmakers advanced legislation Wednesday that would seal name-change records for minors but only after they removed a more contentious section of the bill because of objections from Gov. Jared Polis.

As it passed the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senate Bill 18 would require the automatic suppression of most children’s name-change petitions. Supporters say that is necessary to protect the privacy of transgender youths and their families.

But when the day began, the measure also would have directed family court judges to take into account a parent’s acceptance of a child’s gender identity when determining parenting time. That section had revived a provision that was stripped from a transgender rights bill passed last year, and the bill’s sponsors said before the hearing Wednesday that they’d garnered support from various LGBTQ+ advocacy groups to support the language this year.

The provision was pulled from SB-18 after Polis threatened to veto the bill otherwise, according to Rep. Lorena Garcia, one of the bill’s sponsors, and Z Williams, one of the activists supporting the measure.

“It pains us to remove this provision, as it was a title pulled by the late Sen. (Faith) Winter before her death,” Sen. Katie Wallace, a Longmont Democrat, told committee members. Winter, who died in a car crash in November, sponsored last year’s bill, from which lawmakers dropped the same family court provision amid disagreements among LGBTQ+ groups.
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Colorado Democrats propose tax reforms steering impact of federal tax cuts to families

Colorado Democrats unveiled a suite of bills Tuesday that aim to divorce the state tax code from recent federal changes — generating extra state revenue that would be used to provide at least some money to low and middle-income families with children.

The legislative package sponsored by a dozen lawmakers would repeal a variety of state tax exemptions that mirror tax breaks in the federal code. It puts a particular focus on splitting the state tax code from changes made by the tax cut bill passed last year by Congress and championed by President Donald Trump.

The targeted cuts would include a cap on how much corporations can write off from operating losses, how much depreciation businesses can write off for things like buildings and equipment, and how much interest a business can deduct from its taxes. Filers who use those tax breaks would no longer get the full benefit for state tax purposes.

The new bills build off state Democrats’ work during last summer’s special session to close a slew of tax exemptions and update the state tax code in response to H.R. 1. That is the federal tax bill commonly known as Trump’s “big beautiful bill.”
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Colorado sex workers have long pushed to decriminalize prostitution; now lawmakers are proposing it

After years of advocacy from Colorado sex workers, lawmakers have proposed legislation that would make the state the only one in the U.S. to fully remove criminal penalties for prostitution.

Four Democratic lawmakers introduced Senate Bill 97, which would decriminalize commercial sexual activity in Colorado, last week. The bill wouldn’t legalize the practice or set up an oversight structure regulating it, as the state did with marijuana and Nevada has done with prostitution in several counties. Acting as a pimp or engaging in certain forms of solicitation would remain criminal offenses.

But criminal penalties would otherwise be dropped across the state for anyone selling or paying for sexual activity between adults.

“Whatever your morals are, I don’t believe the government should be involved in the bedroom of consenting adults,” said Sen. Nick Hinrichsen, a Pueblo Democrat and one of the bill’s sponsors. “But beyond that, what you learn is when you (criminalize prostitution), the repercussions are harmful.”
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Bill targeting 3-D-printed firearms is on docket in the Colorado legislature this week

After the federal and state observance of Presidents Day delayed the start of the Colorado legislature’s week, a pair of Democrat-backed gun control bills are set to pass through key steps in the process this week.

The first scheduled to be heard is Senate Bill 43, a measure that would restrict the sale of gun barrels to in-person transactions with federally licensed firearm dealers. That measure is set for debate by the full Senate on Wednesday, with a formal vote possible at the end of the week.

Later that day, the House Judiciary Committee is set to hear House Bill 1144, which would prohibit using 3-D printers to manufacture firearms, large-capacity magazines and rapid-fire devices.
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Bonus reading
A Colorado court sends poor people to jail without access to lawyers, advocates say. It doesn’t record the proceedings.

Jennifer Jones was sitting in Montrose Municipal Court in early January when she noticed something that didn’t seem right.

She witnessed a man in his 60s with multiple trespassing and camping charges receive a 10-day jail sentence. This individual, though, did not have an attorney — a right afforded under the Constitution to anyone facing jail time.

If Jones, a volunteer court-watcher, hadn’t been observing proceedings that day, nobody outside of the people involved with the case would have known what happened.

That’s because Montrose Municipal Court is not a “court of record” — meaning it keeps no written, audio or visual recording of court proceedings. The public, civil rights organizations and members of the media cannot watch court hearings virtually, or access video after the fact, and cannot request any transcripts or audio of the day’s docket.

It’s not clear how many municipal courts in Colorado are not courts of record. But court watchers say they believe Montrose to be the only court in the state that sentences people to jail and isn’t a court of record.

It’s examples like these that spurred Colorado lawmakers this month to introduce a bill that would bar municipal courts that are not courts of record from sending people to jail. House Bill 26-1134, titled “Fairness and Transparency in Municipal Court,” also clarifies that municipal court defendants have a right to counsel and that in-custody proceedings must be livestreamed for the public to view.
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When should Colorado farmworkers be entitled to overtime? Even Democrats don’t agree

Dave Petrocco Sr. sees the writing on the wall.

His business, Petrocco Farms in Brighton, has been growing vegetables on the Front Range since 1916 — but Petrocco said he wonders how long that will continue.

Over the past few years, profits have decreased. Labor costs have accelerated.

Now, five years after establishing overtime rules for Colorado’s farmworkers, Democratic legislators are weighing dueling bills to either ease or tighten those standards.

In considering diametrically opposed policies, lawmakers will have to balance existential fears from an industry that’s weathered pain from tariffs, falling profits and declining commodity prices, against advocates and labor groups clamoring for more support for workers harvesting Colorado’s crops while facing unique vulnerabilities to immigration enforcement and employer abuse.

“Our ag producers are in a tenuous situation,” Amanda Laban, the markets division director for the Colorado Department of Agriculture, told state lawmakers in an oversight hearing last month. She said net farm income was expected to drop to $1.8 billion in 2026, $400 million lower than last year. “Markets are in flux, and prices are low on our commodity crops. The cost of doing business is high.”

Only one of the overtime bills — to make it easier for farmworkers to get more pay — has been introduced, but supporters and opponents have been readying for the debate for weeks. The measures will move through a Democrat-controlled legislature that sparred last year over a similar policy — cutting some restaurant workers’ wages to bolster that industry — and has for years argued over the proper balance between business interests, cost-of-living measures and worker protections.
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