Download a PDF version of our 2026 Legislative Session Report here.
The Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault (CCASA) celebrates a successful 2026 legislative session, highlighting collaboration with survivors, coalition members, partners, and advocates to improve the response to and prevention of sexual violence. Despite a state budget deficit, federal funding challenges, and ongoing uncertainty, Colorado lawmakers advanced meaningful progress and much-needed changes. We are proud to share what our state has accomplished in just 120 days to advance survivor-centered policy.
Through survivor voices, advocate engagement, and statewide leadership, Colorado has:
- Strengthened jails safeguards against sexual abuse by regulating strip searches, restricting access to intimate recordings, increasing accountability, and expanding reporting and advocacy access for survivors
- Established broad survivor-centered reforms to the criminal and legal system, including new testimony and privacy options, trauma-informed training for law enforcement, and enshrining civil avenues for justice
- Enhanced child sexual abuse protections by requiring child advocacy center involvement and expanding access to remote testimony for minors
- Increased safety in technology through new regulations of AI chatbots, digital content creators, and rideshare policies and practices
During the 2026 session, the stories of survivors and the issue of sexual violence were elevated in addressing everything from corrections and judicial processes to transportation, technology, and education. Read on to learn more about the new laws that will have a critical impact on our community.
KEY BILLS
Through ongoing collaboration and continued perseverance, the following new policies will expand survivors’ rights and protections, increase accountability, remove barriers to services and supports, promote autonomy, healing and justice, and prevent future harm.
House Bill 26-1123: Preventing Sexual Abuse in Jails
The law was developed in response to a disturbing pattern of sexual violence in Colorado jails and informed by survivors’ lived experiences, including a recent high-profile case involving the former La Plata County jail commander. This legislation strengthens protections and accountability by establishing more rigorous standards for strip searches, securing and limiting access to body-worn camera footage of strip searches, expanding reporting requirements and whistleblower protections for staff, and ensuring that individuals in custody are informed about their rights and able to access community-based sexual assault advocacy services. HB26-1123 passed with bipartisan support, establishing critical, much needed protections in Colorado jails.
House Bill 26-1052: Rights for Victims of Certain Crimes
This law strengthens Colorado’s Victim Rights Act. HB26-1052 expands victim rights by including notification from the district attorney about potential crime lab misconduct, the ability to use a preferred name or pseudonym throughout proceedings to maintain privacy and safety, and the right to be heard at restitution hearings. The law also increases protections by prohibiting an alleged offender from victim notification in cases where the victim is a child or at-risk adult.
House Bill 26-1103: Report Child Sexual Assault & Courtroom Testimony
HB26-1103 ensures that child victims of sexual abuse have consistent access to support and more equitable pathways to justice. When an allegation of child sexual assault or abuse is made, this law requires law enforcement to promptly notify a local child advocacy center, helping ensure survivors receive trauma-informed care. It also expands the use of remote testimony by raising the age threshold for closed-circuit testimony from under 12 to under 18 and eliminating the barrier that a minor’s distress or trauma from testifying must interfere with their ability to speak in order to testify away from the presence of the defendant.
Senate Bill 26-095: Measures to Support Victim-Survivors of Crimes
Survivors and advocates helped shape and advance SB26-095, a comprehensive package of survivor-centered policy reforms that remove barriers to care and justice by:
- Ensuring victims are informed on how to access medical forensic examination results and records
- Expanding eligibility for closed-circuit television (remote) testimony to adult victims in stalking, sexual violence, domestic violence, and human trafficking cases if they would not be able to reasonably communicate while testifying
- Reaffirming the ban on forced arbitration in sexual assault cases to strengthen enforcement
- Updating the anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) statute to add protections against defamation suits for survivor statements in quasi-judicial proceedings, such as Title IX cases
- Requiring law enforcement to complete trauma-informed training on responding to victims and survivors every five years
- Expanding the newly renamed Sexual Assault Response Review Board by adding two seats for victim-survivors and two for crime laboratory representatives.
House Bill 26-1424: Transportation Network Company Consumer Protection
This law strengthens safety and accountability requirements for transportation network companies, including more frequent background checks for drivers, improved safety training, driver suspension and review processes, and increased cooperation with law enforcement. It also adds new protections for rider and driver safety, privacy, and fairness, including rules around recordings, ratings, and company reporting requirements.
Together, these changes will improve both system response and survivor experience while reducing further harm.
OTHER NOTABLE BILLS
Survivor Support, Rights & Access to Justice
Senate Bill 26-012: Compensable Losses for Tribal Members
This law expands the Colorado Crime Victim Compensation Act to allow enrolled members of federally recognized Tribal members to receive compensation for traditional Native American healing practices and ceremonies after experiencing a crime. The law helps ensure that victim compensation programs are more accessible and responsive to the needs of Native survivors and Tribal communities.
House Bill 26-1009: Colorado Mandatory Lethality Assessment Act
This legislation was developed in response to recent findings from the domestic violence fatality review board of an increase in domestic violence homicides. The law requires law enforcement officers to conduct a lethality assessment when responding to a domestic violence incident and to connect victim-survivors with a community-based advocate for support. The law also directs the development and implementation of a training for peace officers on administering the assessment and providing referrals for victim-survivors.
House Bill 26-1322: Civil Actions for Conversion Therapy Survivors
This law creates a civil cause of action for survivors harmed by conversion therapy and removes the statute of limitations for these claims by aligning the language with existing extensions available in child sexual abuse cases, underscoring the long-term trauma and lasting impacts experienced by survivors.
House Bill 26-1335: Abortion Medication Access on College Campuses
This law improves access to reproductive care for students in Colorado by requiring public and private institutions of higher education and local district colleges to provide access to abortion medication, unless doing so conflicts with the institutions; religious beliefs.
Consumer Protections
House Bill 26-1043: Transportation Network Company Discriminatory Practices
This law strengthens enforcement of discrimination protections in transportation network companies, including protections for riders with service animals and members of protected classes. It also improves reporting systems for complaints and increases penalties for companies that fail to address violations.
House Bill 26-1326: Sunset Public Utilities Commission
This law, a broad sunset review law, continues the Public Utilities Commission through 2037. While the law includes many changes, particularly notable elements pertain to transportation network company safety regulations, including establishing verification processes for drivers’ identities, as well as added reporting requirements around complaints, investigations, and filing civil penalties.
Technology
Senate Bill 26-011: Search Warrants Provided to Covered Platforms
This law requires certain online platforms to maintain a process for law enforcement to submit and track search warrants. The law includes requirements for those platforms to establish a consistent point of contact, immediate acknowledgment of search warrants, and timely compliance with warrants. In practice, the law will help to preserve time-sensitive digital evidence in cases impacting survivors of online harassment, image-based sexual abuse, and other technology-facilitated abuse.
House Bill 26-1263: Conversational Artificial Intelligence Service Operator Requirements
This law establishes safeguards to regulate AI chatbots by requiring clear disclosures that users are interacting with AI, limiting manipulative engagement tactics for minors, preventing sexually explicit or emotionally dependent interactions with minors, and requiring protections such as crisis-resource referrals and parental privacy and account controls. HB26-1263 will help to protect young people from sexual exploitation, manipulation, and other forms of technology-facilitated harm.
House Bill 26-1058: Protections for Minors Featured in Digital Content
This law establishes protections for minors featured in monetized online content by a parent or guardian, including recordkeeping requirements, trust accounts for earnings, the right to request removal of content at adulthood, and civil remedies for violations. The bill also prohibits a person from financially benefitting from sharing sexual content of a minor and requires social media companies to implement a plan around this issue. These protections will help safeguard minors from exploitation and provide greater control over harmful digital content.
Criminal Legal System Response
Senate Bill 26-015: Commercial Sexual Activity with a Child
This law removes harmful “child prostitution” language from Colorado statute, replacing it with “commercial sexual activity with a child,” and strengthens Colorado laws on child sexual exploitation by clarifying offenses, increasing penalties, and requiring stricter minimum sentences for related crimes. The legislation also removed language that allowed an exemption from the criminal statute for a spouse of the child victim.
Senate Bill 26-149: Pathways for Individuals with Mental Health Disorder
This law changes how Colorado handles cases in which individuals with serious mental health disorders and developmental disabilities are charged with serious crimes but are unable to stand trial. Rather than those charges being dismissed, this law creates another pathway, allowing that person to be moved into the civil mental health or disability system. The law will ensure that victim-survivor notification rights are maintained, even though the law operates outside of the VRA framework.
House Bill 26-1290: Criminal Offense of Assault
This law requires a court to sentence a defendant convicted of assault by strangulation as a crime of violence subject to mandatory incarceration if the individual has previously been convicted of second-degree assault by strangulation, recognizing the seriousness of strangulation.
Civil Rights
House Bill 26-1045: Disabilities Housing Protections
This law codifies long-standing Department of Housing and Urban Development housing guidelines, which were recently withdrawn, into the Colorado Anti-discrimination Act (CADA) to ensure that housing rights for individuals with disabilities remain protected. The law also strengthens civil protections for individuals who need assistance animals, including service and emotional support animals.
House Bill 26-1141: Discriminatory Practices in Public Schools
This law requires public schools to adopt Title VI civil rights policies and designate a Title VI coordinator to help ensure alignment and compliance with federal anti-discrimination law. Earlier versions of the law, aimed to enshrine Title VI into state law, would have expanded the Colorado Civil Rights Division authority to investigate claims of discrimination, but these elements were removed due to cost concerns.
Senate Bill 26-013: Exclude Cohabitation from Elements of Bigamy
This law eliminates cohabitation from the elements of criminal bigamy, ensuring individuals are not prevented from accessing services and supports due outdated statute that made it illegal for a married person to cohabit with another person.
Thanks to the courage of survivors and the expertise of our community, Colorado has strengthened rights and protections and increased access to justice for survivors. Additionally, the state has promoted sexual violence prevention policies. These new laws will have a critical impact on safety and healing for all Colorado communities. For more information or questions about state laws and policies, contact CCASA at policy@ccasa.org.
This publication was supported by Subgrant No. 2025-VW-26-259-02 awarded by the state administering office for the Office on Violence Against Women, U.S. Department of Justice’s STOP Formula Grant Program. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Division of Criminal Justice, Colorado Department of Public Safety nor the U.S. Department of Justice.