Controversial gender identity bill heads to Colorado Senate floor vote

A controversial gender identity protection bill heads to the Colorado Senate floor next week after being approved with some major amendments in committee on Thursday.

House Bill 25-1312, titled “Legal Protections for Transgender Individuals,” has been hotly debated during the legislative session, garnering support from transgender rights groups and opposition from parental rights and religious groups.

The bill passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday following hours of debate. It was amended to remove the controversial “coercive control" clause, which would have allowed judges to consider a parent’s use of “deadnaming” or misgendering a child as abuse when making custody decisions.

The legislation would still make deadnaming and misgendering discriminatory actions under the state’s anti-discrimination act. Another amendment removed some language from the legislation’s shield provision, but would still shield parents from laws in other states that ban gender-related procedures.

Democratic sponsors of the bill pulled the “coercive control" clause, which was under Section 2 of the bill, after getting a lot of feedback from the public.

“We know that a lot of the emails we’ve been getting, a lot of the calls we have been getting have been focused on Section 2,” one of the bill sponsors Sen. Faith Winter, D-Westminster, told the committee before the amendment to cut the clause from the bill was approved.

The Colorado Catholic Conference was one of the opposing organizations that testified against the legislation, saying the bill amounts to “a codification of discrimination against faith-based and private institutions.”

“Each person should be treated with dignity, respect and compassion,” CCC Executive Director Brittany Vessely testified, according to Denver Catholic. “But HB1312 codifies discrimination against any institution – faith-based or private – and individual with a different belief about human sexuality, and forces them to conform to government-mandated beliefs about ‘sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression’ under threat of criminal and financial penalties.”

HB 25-1312, which was approved by the House in early April, is scheduled to be heard Monday on the Senate floor.