Updated at 5:34 p.m. on Feb. 19: This story was updated to include additional comments from Z Williams, Katie Wallace and Gov. Jared Polis’ office.
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, 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 , 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.
Garcia said Polis issued the veto threat earlier this month. Williams said the governor told the bill’s supporters that he didn’t want to make any changes to family law.
“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.
In a statement Wednesday evening, Polis spokeswoman Ally Sullivan said the governor “opposed the contradictory and troublesome family law provisions in the legislation, which were substantially the same as those he opposed last year.” She added that LGBTQ+ activists and attorneys specializing in family law had “warned against potential adverse and detrimental impacts on the very children the bill was intended to help.”
Polis’ statement also seemed to suggest that the governor was still not on board with SB-18, even with the family court provision stripped from the proposal.
“The governor would be open to new legislation regarding record suppression for name changes for all people and appreciates the ongoing conversations with bill sponsors,” Sullivan wrote.
On Thursday, Wallace and Williams both disputed the governor’s claim that advocacy groups had concerns about the family court provision. Both said that the bill’s backers had successfully negotiated a more modest amendment to assuage concerns from LGBTQ+ groups. The family court provision was also significantly changed from the version that died in 2025, Williams said, rather than “substantially the same,” as the statement from Polis’ office claimed.
Wallace said the sponsors wouldn’t kill the bill and replace it with a new one, as Polis seemed to desire.
In a followup statement Thursday, the governor’s office struck a conciliatory tone.
“Governor Polis deeply appreciates Senators Wallace and (Chris) Kolker and other sponsors’ commitment on this important issue and their collaboration,” Sullivan wrote. “We look forward to further discussions on the remaining provisions of the legislation.”Williams, who runs a nonprofit law firm, said those remaining provisions were still important to protect the privacy of children who, through their parents, petition to change their names. The bill doesn’t apply to people younger than 18 who have been convicted of crimes.
“This bill will protect children from AI data-scraping of those public records, the potential of bullying if they should be found and from hostile individuals in the wider world,” Wallace said during the committee hearing Wednesday.
The removal of the bill’s family court provision did not stanch the opposition from conservatives and critics of the measure. More than 70 people signed up to testify on the bill, and opponents criticized the family court language and gender-affirming care generally.
The committee voted 5-2 to advance the bill. It will next head to the Senate floor.
