Women Rising: Colorado Legislative Session Recap
Reflecting on a Session Rooted in Economic Security, Safety, and Care
Aspen Rawson (they/them)
was the 2026 policy and advocacy intern for The Women’s Foundation of Colorado and a 2026 graduate of University of Colorado Boulder. They previously wrote about helping to eliminate Boulder County’s tampon tax.
As the 2026 Colorado legislative session came to a close, I keep thinking about the people behind the policy: Advocates, coalition partners, legislators, staff, survivors, families, and community members who spent months pushing Colorado closer to economic security, safety, and dignity for women and girls.
This was my first session working alongside The Women’s Foundation of Colorado’s public policy team, and it was everything I hoped it would be: exciting, overwhelming, invigorating, and deeply clarifying. As an organization, we took positions on 34 bills that covered topics ranging from housing and workers’ rights to tax code changes and early childhood. I wrote fact sheets, joined coalition conversations, tracked bills, supported lobby days, and learned firsthand how policy becomes real through relationships, persistence, and collective work.
More than anything, this session taught me that fiscal policy is women’s policy. Our state budget shapes whether families can afford child care, whether survivors can access support, whether schools and public systems are funded, and whether Colorado women have the resources they need to thrive.
Fiscal policy is women’s policy
One of the clearest lessons from this session is that budgets are moral documents. When Colorado invests in education, child care, food access, survivor support, and workforce opportunity, it invests in the people who hold families and communities together.
That is why HB26-1207, Disclosure of Demographic Workforce Data, prime sponsored by Rep. Jamie Jackson, mattered so much and why WFCO made it one of our two priority bills. The bill requires certain large employers to report demographic workforce data already collected through federal reporting. A benefit of this policy is that transparency helps workers make informed decisions about where they work because they can see whether leadership and pay reflect real opportunities for advancement. When data reveals limited diversity in upper management or persistent pay gaps, women and other workers can better assess whether an employer is likely to value their contributions and support their growth.
This session also included important conversations about how Colorado raises and distributes revenue. Our second policy priority was a package of tax policy bills, including HB26-1223, Modifying Certain Tax Expenditures, prime sponsored by Rep. Steven Woodrow. It reflected a broader push to make Colorado’s tax code work better for families. Family affordability proposals, including HB26-1221 and HB26-1222, showed the continued need for fair revenue policies that direct resources toward families with children. While only HB26-1223 passed, which significantly weakens the potential of the Family Affordability Credit, we are committed to continuing to fight for tax credits that provide more resources to hardworking families.
AI policy, surveillance, and economic justice
Economic justice work also has to respond to new and emerging technology. Artificial intelligence is already shaping what wages workers are offered, what prices consumers see, and who gets screened out of jobs, housing, health care, education, or public services before they ever speak to a person.
One important step forward was HB26-1210, Prohibit Surveillance Price & Wage Setting, prime sponsored by Rep. Jennifer Bacon. The bill limits the use of intimate personal data in algorithms that set individualized prices or wages. For women and workers already facing wage gaps, caregiving penalties, and economic instability, this matters. Data-driven discrimination is still discrimination, even when it is hidden behind software. While this bill passed in the legislature it is waiting to be signed by Colorado Gov. Polis.
At the same time, this session brought a more complicated development. In 2024, Colorado passed SB24-205, Consumer Protections for Artificial Intelligence, a first-in-the-nation AI law intended to protect consumers from algorithmic discrimination. This year, lawmakers passed SB26-189, Automated Decision-Making Technology, prime sponsored by Sen. Robert Rodriguez, which repeals and reenacts that framework with a narrower structure. While the new law still includes notice, documentation, correction rights, and human review in some consequential decisions, it also represents a retreat from the stronger promise of the 2024 law.
If algorithms shape wages, prices, housing, health care, education, employment, and access to public services, then AI policy is also gender justice policy.
Protecting women and girls from violence and discrimination
This session brought meaningful progress on policies designed to protect survivors and prevent violence. HB26-1123, Preventing Sexual Abuse in Jails, prime sponsored by Rep. Katie Stewart, creates stronger protections against sexual abuse in local detention facilities, including reporting requirements, access to advocates, and accountability for officers who abuse prisoners. WFCO supported survivors’ ability to testify on this bill and provided lobbying resources to ensure its passage.
Colorado also advanced protections for survivors of domestic violence through HB26-1009, the Colorado Mandatory Lethality Assessment Act, prime sponsored by Rep. Monica Duran. The bill requires officers responding to domestic violence to conduct lethality assessments and connect high-risk survivors with community-based victim advocates.
Other measures, including SB26-085, Military Protection Orders, prime sponsored by Sen. Lisa Frizell, and SB26-095, Measures to Support Victim-Survivors of Crimes, prime sponsored by Sen. Mike Weissman, strengthened coordination, trauma-informed response, and protections for survivors navigating legal and law enforcement systems.
Together, these bills show that survivor safety is not just about responding after harm has occurred. It is about prevention, training, accountability, and making sure people can access support when they need it most.
Early childhood education and care are economic infrastructure
This session also reinforced that early childhood policy is economic policy. Families cannot work, build stability, or move toward long-term prosperity without safe, affordable, accessible child care.
Several bills advanced that goal. HB26-1259, Department of Early Childhood Clean-Up, prime sponsored by Rep. Emily Sirota, clarified early childhood systems, including child care licensing, universal preschool, provider reimbursement, and confidentiality protections. HB26-1260, Updates to Child Care Assistance Programs, prime sponsored by Rep. Lorena García, updated the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program and improved policies designed to support access and affordability.
Colorado also continued its commitment to child care through HB26-1004, Continuation of Child Care Contribution Tax Credit, prime sponsored by Rep. Julie McCluskie, which extends a tax credit for contributions that support child care in Colorado.
These policies may sound technical, but their impact is personal. They shape whether providers can stay open, whether families can afford care, and whether Colorado treats early childhood education as the essential infrastructure it is.
What I am taking with me after my internship
Paradoxically, this session taught me that policy work is both slower and more urgent than I expected. Some bills move quickly. Some take years. Some pass with bipartisan support. Some get narrowed, amended, delayed, or lost entirely. But every meeting, fact sheet, testimony draft, coalition call, and lobby day is part of building the conditions for change.
I came into this session eager to learn. I leave it with a much deeper understanding of how much work it takes to move even one policy forward, and with a stronger belief in the power of coalition. The wins from this session happened because people across Colorado kept showing up for women, girls, families, survivors, workers, and children.
At The Women’s Foundation of Colorado, we know that women thriving means Colorado rising. This session showed me what that looks like in practice—fighting for a budget that reflects our values, protecting survivors, investing in child care, advancing worker and family economic security, and responding to new threats like algorithmic discrimination.
There is still so much work ahead. But this session reminded me that change is possible when we are organized, persistent, and clear about who our policies are meant to serve. While my time at WFCO is ending, I hope you’ll continue to engage throughout the summer and fall through voting up and down the ballot with women in mind. I know I will.
