Senate Judiciary [May 06, 2026]

Senators, Carson.

Doherty.

Kenrickson.

Here.

Present.

Here.

Here.

Everyone is present.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members. Well, I tell you what, Senate Bill 71 has had quite the journey. Lots of lessons learned. Where I was with this bill and where we're at and how it's going to end. Well, we knew there's a fiscal note on this, and with the budget constraints that we are facing, there's no way that Senate Bill 71 will proceed forward. I had thought of doing a strike-through and just keeping, There was a very important part of the bill that was to give citizens the ability that if law enforcement were going to buy more equipment or equipment that has different technology, that citizens would have to be informed 30 days before that contract would be signed. So I was thinking of just carrying this bill through with just that. But as I started talking with law enforcement, even with that, they had some concerns. And I definitely want to bring in the law enforcement. As with Senate Bill 70 and 71, it is critical to bring in law enforcement. There was areas that I had not even thought of, and that's part of shaking out a bill and trying to make it good. And that's what I want. And so I am going to PI Senate Bill 71. It has, as far as the good things that have come from this bill, it definitely has gotten the discussion rolling. Out of all the bills that I've been on, Senate Bill 71 has definitely gained the attention of the public in the news. And it is very clear this is important to Coloradans. And so again just real quickly I highlight for those that are new to 71 71 just creates guardrails against overreach empowers law enforcement within constitutional bounds and shields citizens for their privacy And so, again, the goal is to optimize that balance of equipping our law enforcement with this technology so they can enhance the safety of citizens while also putting guardrails up to protect citizens' liberty, privacy, and information. And we know that even on the federal level, there's a bill coming forth in Congress very similar to 70 and 71. So this is important across the nation. And so I hope to find, I'll be working on this over the summertime I hope to find an optimal path with our law enforcement and citizens. In fact, the chief of police, the paternal order of police, the district attorneys, the Colorado sheriffs of Colorado have agreed to work with me. And I greatly appreciate that. I want to make sure to get this bill right. I realize that this is going to be a bill where not everyone is happy, but if we could get to where people don't oppose, I'm told that's how you can tell it's a good bill. And so that is the goal, and I look forward to working with all the stakeholders, and it's an honor to be here. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, I just want to thank our colleague, Senator Zamora Wilson, for working on this legislation. I think, you know, it's a huge challenge here between our law enforcement concerns, public safety, but also privacy. and I know a lot of our constituents are increasingly concerned about the privacy issues out there that we're constantly under surveillance. You know, I generally side with the law enforcement view of these things, but I do think there's some very legitimate concerns here, and so I wish you well in finding a balance, and hopefully we'll get to see that next year. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Senator Carson. Members, any other closing comments? All right. Motion has been made to postpone indefinitely. Ms. Jensen, now please call the roll.

Aye.

Yes.

With respect to the work the sponsor has done and also the criticality of this issue, no.

Yes.

Aye.

Aye.

Yes. Okay, the vote is 6-1 to postpone indefinitely. Thank you for bringing this issue to the legislature, Senator. All right we proceed to 14 and we will invite the sponsors to take the table All right, sponsors, when you're ready, whoever would like to start off, let us know, open comments about 1421.

Senator Doherty.

Thank you. Committee, do we have questions for our sponsors? I did have a few. I'll toss them all out and either invite you guys to speak to them or possibly witnesses could. Page five references phantom equity. It's a colorful term I've not heard before. I was wondering if somebody could unpack that. That's one. Two, page nine, there was an amendment in the House to insert the concept of a nonprofit organization and then to sort of define that out. And I wondered if somebody could just give an example of sort of what we comprehend there. and then last pages 10 to 11 again this was a house amendment nothing in this section and we have a set of exclusions in other words what we don't intend to disturb necessarily a lot of this bill is written in a pretty high level of abstraction and I was going to invite some examples there and again this can be for witnesses too Senator Duerty

Very good. Members, other questions? All right, we'll go to witnesses. There's only a few folks signed up. First panel, let's please invite Jason Wasaki and Lauren Furman. All right, thanks for being with us. Whoever would like to start off.

Ms. Furman, please go ahead.

All right. Thank you both. Members, questions for our witnesses? Senator Carson.

Mr Wasoki Go ahead Thank you Yes Senator Carson So I mentioned we work with a whole bunch of stakeholders including judiciary to make sure that they were involved in this process so that we weren proverbially stepping on their toes We certainly see that the Supreme Court has the ability to modify its rules. The rulemaking process at the court is not governed by the same sort of timelines that we're facing here with this already here in Colorado. The other issue is that the OARC, the Office of Attorney Regulation Council, they are a complaint-driven system. And so if nobody is providing them with a complaint of problematic incentives in the marketplace, they won't investigate the issue. And that's just a function of how they work. So, Senator Carson, I certainly hope that the Supreme Court takes a hard look at this and initiates a rulemaking process. But because this is already here, we're aware of a couple of firms at least that are working on this sort of like backdoor, you might have already noticed a blanket of new attorney advertising, and that's all coming from the private equity side. So while the rulemaking process that the Supreme Court undergoes could be a great avenue, it's already here and if we let it continue to manifest or metastasize it may be too late. Senator Carson.

Absolutely correct. So I'm at a relatively small firm where only 20 attorneys, obviously not the smallest firm in the state. But this bill specifically allows you to bonus employees, to hire vendors, non-lawyers to provide you services. The critical difference is that I, as a lawyer, would not want to have, say, a vendor who does all my marketing or maybe my back-end HR to have as its compensation structure a percentage of the fees that I generate. because that gives me now a tilted incentive to, for example, churn and burn or minimize the amount of work that I do on a case, minimize my staffing so that the HR company or the marketing company is getting an increase in the amount they get each month. You know, my firm uses marketing companies. We use vendors for a lot of our back-end office, and that will be perfectly allowed so long as it's not based on percentage or incentives of total fees.

Go ahead. So with regard to phantom equity so there this weird thing in contingency fee law firms where we lay out the costs for a case as the case goes while we not getting paid We may never get paid But if you do get paid ultimately you say you win the case or settle the case and you've got, say, $10,000 in costs. You've spent that money, and then that money comes in, say, two, three years after you've spent it. You could have a structure where a private equity firm pays those costs up front and then takes a percentage of the fee total as it comes back and has an equity interest in the case or in the firm as a whole. I mean, I don't have the numbers of my firm exactly, but I can tell you that there is a set amount of what I would call loans, they're not technically loans, for costs, that a private equity firm might come in and say, we will pay that money, reimburse you that sort of phantom equity and will pay to help you avoid the taxes on the back end, which is the other part of phantom equity or phantom income that comes into play. Because when I get those costs two or three years after I've laid them out, the firm now has to pay taxes on those costs in that year but doesn't get any tax benefit during the period in which those costs are fronted. So you could easily find a way. It would be a pretty surreptitious way to do it, but where the private equity firm would have a stake in the firm through that phantom cost, which we're calling phantom equity.

Yeah, sure. So I'll talk about the financing part on pages 10 and 11. So there are very normal and traditional ways that law firms, particularly those taking on very high-stakes litigation on a contingency fee basis, help finance the cost, sometimes as much as $10 million in costs for experts, travel, et cetera, finance those. And that's through a very structured, upfront contractual arrangement where a company, a third-party company, may finance those costs and even help the firm with some fees that it might otherwise generate to stave off essentially financial disaster while they're working on what sometimes may be the only case the firm has. For example, like tobacco, asbestos, these kinds of large cases that can suck up a firm's entire existence for a decade at a time. And so those financing arrangements are explicitly allowed here. And those contractual arrangements do not give the company that's doing the financing a say in how the case is run, whether or not it should be settled, when it should be settled. and those lines are very clearly drawn in the contract, and so it allows for those traditional financing arrangements. That's helpful. Thank you.

No. I think my colleague covered it.

My name is Dave Johnson. I'm the CEO and founder of Modern Family Law, which is a family law firm that was established in Colorado about 10 years ago. We have offices across five states, 15 offices total, about 100 lawyers, about 200 employees. We don't use an MSO. We are not part of an ABS, and we don't use lead generation, which is the Senate bill that is mirrored to this 1421. I'm here to oppose this bill on the principle of innovation. MSOs, even though we don't use them, master service organizations, which are companies that are split apart from a law firm that provide financing for a law firm's operations, are common and have been for a long time. I compete against MSOs every day and have for the last 10 years. They are a tool of innovation that the legal profession has used to try and generate investment capital that they can use in technology, in compensating their employees, basically in innovation. The ABS is alternative business structures out of Arizona are also an innovation tool that was created by the Supreme Court in Arizona, basically removing the limitations of five point four rule five point four, which limits the ownership of law firms to lawyers. The one thing I haven't heard in this entire process is what Arizona thinks of the ABS program. As the former chairman of the Colorado Bar Association's AI and Innovation Task Force, I got to interview the people who created the ABS program in Arizona and the people who are running it now. They're very proud of their invention. They see it working for the consumers, for the businesses and for the law firms. The reason for that is because the ABS allows outside ownership to invest in a law firm so that law firms can generate their own. I guess I'm out of time. But the principle is that these are tools of innovation that need to be protected, preserved and expanded.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Johnson, I know you ran out of time, and I'm really curious to hear more about the ABS and also anything else that you can enlighten us on. Thank you. Mr. Johnson.

Senator Zimmer Wilson, go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, excellent. I mean, you mentioned about a lot of things in economics like innovation. We know that when innovation goes down, efficiency goes down, and things are not optimal. Also, would you agree with this bill, this is going to increase barriers, which we know will increase prices. Just for clarification, is that what you're saying?

Senator Moore Wilson, good for now.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. My name is Kevin Chaney. I'm here on behalf of CTLA in support of House Bill 1421. I'm also the founding partner of a mid-sized personal injury firm here in Colorado. This bill is about who controls legal decision-making in Colorado, lawyers bound by ethical rules, or private equity focused on profit. When Coloradans hire an attorney, they expect that advice is shaped by their unique situation, not by business quotas or investor expectations. expectations. That independence is a cornerstone of our legal system, and this bell protects that independence. Across the country, we're seeing increasing efforts to treat legal services like any other scalable business model. When private equity enters the picture, legal representation can begin to look more like a volume-driven enterprise, where profit and return take priority over careful, individualized advocacy. But we don't have to guess about what will happen. Look at other industries. 30% of veterinary practices are now owned by private equity, up from 8% a decade ago. 75% of emergency vet hospitals are owned by private equity. From 2017 to 2023, private equity poured $51 billion into vet practices, all as costs rose 40 to 50%. From 2015 to 2021, the amount of private equity-backed dental practices doubled, But the cost of getting your kids cavity fixed continues to rise. It's the same playbook. Take over by saying you can innovate and improve efficiency. Then you cut staffing, cut salaries, raise prices and profit. Law firms are simply the next target. And I would note that Utah has already substantially reduced their program and put in guardrails that said they had to focus on Utah citizens and poor people. And the overwhelming majority of these entities left. And they all went to Arizona. And if you look at Arizona, the Arizona Bar Association is begging the Supreme Court to walk back their policies because it's bad for consumers. I'd be happy to answer any of your questions.

I think at least under some conditions it continues to be allowed Is that your understanding sir Yes Mr Chairman Loans including using future case revenues as collateral are still allowed So a traditional loan where you go to a bank and just get an interest rate or a line of credit is still allowed. Also, more focused on personal injury and mass torts, the type of legal financing subject to last year's bill banning foreign involvement. But legal financing remains available for those, you know, Aaron Brockovich type bet the firm lawsuits where, you know, one firm is working on a case for 10 years and has no revenue or other means of paying for it. So all of those have been protected. All nonprofits have been protected. And I'd also just like to really note that this bill repeals itself in September of 2030 so that we can evaluate the legal landscape. We're not opposed to all access to justice. There's certainly an access to justice problem in this country. We just want a program that will actually fix it. And what Arizona has done, you know, so about 70 percent of all the private equity investment has flown into personal injury and mass torts, not family law or immigration or other areas where there was a real access to justice need. And I would respectfully disagree. If you look at the fee agreements of these massive private equity backed firms, a third is no longer the standing contingency fee. It's 40, 45 percent because the return on investment for private equity has to be massive. So there's the committee to support this common sense bill to protect Colorado consumers while we evaluate regulatory changes in the future via the Supreme Court.

I want to confirm the committee has L9 and L10.

Move L9 to House Bill 1421.

Yes, this is a technical amendment to clarify that we're specifically contemplating economic outcomes for LegalZoom, so it just adds economic before outcomes.

Senator Doherty. I move L-10 to House Bill 1421.

L-10 is the amendment I spoke briefly about in my opening, which changes where any damages will go. Currently, the scourged money goes to the judicial cash fund, and this amendment ensures that that goes to the general fund.

Seeing none.

Senator Doherty, motion's yours. I move House Bill 1421 as amended to the Committee of the Whole with a favor of recommendation.

Henriksen.

Wallace.

Moore Wilson.

Roberts.

Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, members of committee. If you were to add up all of the adhesion contracts that everybody in this room has agreed to, it would probably be in the thousands. It might be in the tens of thousands, and that's because we all, as consumers or as employees, sign adhesion contracts every day. Those are the terms of service that you have to click yes on and able to use all kinds of services and products. And almost all of those include an arbitration clause, which says that if something happens or someone gets hurt or the product doesn't work, that you can't go to court. You have to go to arbitration. And what this bill is about is really just ensuring that the system is fair, regardless of whether you go to arbitration or go to court. because functionally speaking, you don't have a choice of whether to sign an adhesion contract or not. You can either, for example, when you buy a cell phone, you can agree to the terms of service or you can try to navigate modern life without a cell phone, which isn't really much of an option. So this bill is really just about ensuring fairness between both arbitration and court, also ensuring access to justice

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I won't add too much. Senator Ball covered it pretty well. I will simply just elaborate a little bit that those damages after 120 days, as well as the piece of the unconscionable fees, being unconscionably excessive of what it would be to bring a case to court. We're dealing, in so many cases, we're dealing with individuals who are harmed, or at least allegedly harmed, are consumers or employees who often may not be the litigants with the most resources available to them. Indeed, usually they are not. And the concern is that having an excessive fee structure for arbitration or waiting after an award to be carried into judgment is both time-consuming and costly, And that is a barrier, and no individual should have as a barrier to justice their economic viability to bring their claim. And that is what we're trying to address in part with this bill.

We looked at a couple other states where they have enshrined this idea in state law. the one we mirrored most was Vermont but these laws exist in a lot of other states and that standard and the standard that's used in common law frequently is substantially exceed

Mr. Chair, committee members, Ted Lighty on behalf of the Colorado Association of Home Builders. We're here in respectful opposition at 1236. Unfortunately, our legal experts were not available today, so while my comments are largely theirs, if the committee has specific questions on preemption or procedure, please defer to any of the attorneys on the panel. Arbitration is very important to our industry because it resolves disputes for all parties in a faster, fair, and more efficient manner than the overburdened civil court system can. One of its primary benefits is the ability to utilize decision makers with significantly more relevant experience than your typical judge or juror. And that, as you can imagine, is very important when dealing with highway technical issues we often see in construction defect claims. We appreciate the sponsor's willingness to consider our issues, but we just can't agree with the current version of the bill. I have not seen these last amendments. Under current law, Colorado arbitrators' neutrality and their conflicts and their bias are already addressed, both through statute and through ethical frameworks imposed by the administering bodies. The bill appears to move away from that established framework. work. We believe it's manageable to do a case-by-case approach. It's judicially reviewable, and it's consistent with how bias is evaluated in other adjudicatory settings. By contrast, we believe this bill's approach is overly broad and difficult to administer. It doesn't necessarily improve neutrality in any given case. Current law has targeted remedies for actual bias. This bill introduces broad prospective restrictions untethered to a specific dispute. These are significant policy shifts and ones that may create more uncertainty than protection. We support fair access to dispute resolution but cannot support the bill in its current form. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. My name is Caroline Woodhouse, and I am here on behalf of the Colorado Bankers Association. We appreciate the sponsor's engagement with stakeholders and acknowledge that the bill was amended in the House in several meaningful ways. Those changes have improved aspects of the legislation. However, we remain opposed due to serious and unresolved concerns about the scope of authority granted to arbitrators under this legislation. At its core, arbitration is intended to be an efficient, streamlined alternative to the judicial process, one that provides timely dispute resolution without replicating the full complexity of court proceedings. This bill departs from that principle in significant ways. Most notably, the legislation would empower arbitrators with authorities that have traditionally and appropriately been reserved for judges operating within the judicial system and its procedural safeguards. First, the bill authorizes arbitrators to impose treble damages if an award is not paid within a specified time frame. Treble damages are a severe and punitive remedy. They are not merely compensatory They are designed to punish and deter Such remedies require careful judicial oversight including adherence to evidentiary standards procedural protections, and appellate review. Granting this authority to an arbitrator who is not bound by the same rules of procedure or subject to meaningful appellate scrutiny raises significant due process concerns. Second, the bill permits arbitrators to award exemplary or punitive damages. Again, these are extraordinary remedies that belong squarely within the judicial system. Courts are equipped to evaluate whether the high legal threshold for punitive damages has been met and their decisions are subject to appeal. Arbitration, by contrast, is intentionally limited in its review mechanisms. Expanding arbitral authority in this way blurs the line between arbitration and litigation without importing the corresponding safeguards that protect fairness and consistency. In closing, we appreciate the amendments, but the core concerns remain. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, my name is Michael Smith, NFIB State Director for Colorado, representing 6,000 small businesses and communities across the state in all types of industries. I'm here today in opposition to House Bill 136, Arbitration Reform. Unfortunately, this bill would not improve the arbitration system but do damage to it. NFIB strongly supports arbitration as an efficient and cost-effective option to costly court litigation. As you may already know, most small businesses do not have in-house legal teams or financial resources to commit to a trial. This bill would increase court filings and result in small businesses getting tied up in protracted court proceedings that could otherwise be handled by arbitration. Costly, time-consuming lawsuits lead to higher costs for small businesses, employees, and ultimately consumers. Arbitration, on the other hand, avoids the high costs of attorneys, court fees, and extended downtime. Arbitration cases are resolved in under a year on average, compared to over two years for federal district cases and nearly three years with appeals. This quickness prevents disputes from lingering and affecting business decisions and operations. A stable and fair legal framework is crucial for ensuring a solid environment for small business. An arbitration system that is accessible and affordable is a critical component to that framework. Thank you for allowing me to testify, and I respectfully ask for your no vote on House Bill 1236.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the committee. My name is John Conklin. I'm an attorney and outside counsel for the Colorado Medical Society, speaking today in opposition to this bill, and we urge a no vote. We have two significant problems with the bill. First is the ability for a sole decision maker who is both the fact finder and the judicial officer, so to speak, being able to award punitive damages. in the court system. There are built-in protections for all parties involved in cases where punitive damages may be raised, and disregarding those or sidestepping those to simply allow an arbitrator to award punitive damages will increase exposure and create a disincentive for use by those parties that currently do use arbitration in an effort to keep cases out of the court system Arbitration is meant to be more efficient It meant to be less expensive for litigants. It's meant to streamline the procedure. You can't do that if you have a case with punitive damages. There's too much at stake. So investing all of that power in one person is inappropriate and lacks the judicial safeguards that exist in the court system. Secondly, the ability to retroactively disqualify a neutral because the litigant is unhappy with the outcome does not increase the efficiency of the arbitration process. It does not lower costs. It does not promote the use of arbitration for parties. It introduces uncertainty and the standards that are in the bill are very vague. You can look at a policy, a process, a procedure, or a pattern to try to disqualify an arbitrator. And those are not defined. There are current safeguards in place, as another witness already mentioned, that prohibit frank bias by an arbitrator, and those should continue to be the law. So for those reasons, we are to no vote.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. My name is Jeff Rebo. I am here on behalf of the Colorado Defense Lawyers Association and the Colorado Civil Justice League. We oppose this bill and urge a no vote. While it has laudable aims, the bill itself has substantial drafting and design problems which overwhelm the good that the bill seeks to enact. While the sponsor's framing it as protecting employees and consumers, a critical review indicates several provisions likely to produce adverse, unintended, or counterproductive consequences. The practical result is that for the vast majority of arbitration agreements, FAA, the Federal Arbitration Act, will preempt much of what this bill does, and the practical result is the vast majority of the arbitration agreements will nonetheless be enforceable and you'll create a huge amount of litigation about what is or is not preempted by the federal act. Secondly, if the bill actually becomes effective, businesses have a rational response. They will drop arbitration entirely and require all disputes to go to court. This is counterintuitively bad for low value claimants. Arbitration for all its faults offers lower filing fees, faster resolution and lower attorney fees thresholds for viability. The fee cap itself is also vague and invites manipulation. The languages that exceed the fees and costs required by state courts to bring a state claim for a case filed in state court is grammatically awkward and legally undefined. The arbitrator disqualification standard is also dangerously vague. A rule policy procedure or demonstrated pattern of conduct that discriminates against or has the effect of preventing a party asserting their rights is almost unintelligible. What exactly that would mean and it would disqualify a large number of arbitrators. I see my time is up. We

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, the problem is the standard is, and let me find exactly what the standard says, but it says a pattern of conduct with the effect of preventing claimants from prevailing. The question becomes then, what is, you know, the amendment says you eliminate the word solely, which helps, but it still leaves an enormous room for challenge wherever there's any other factor that can be alleged. As a result, experienced arbitrators may exit the market rather than face disqualification litigation. It may result in forum shopping. Every arbitration becomes vulnerable to a preliminary fight about the arbitrator's history, defeating arbitrators' core purpose, and it has the effect of chilling neutral decision-making because arbitrators may feel pressured to rule in ways that protect their statistical record as opposed to applying the law and the concepts of equity.

Mr. Lighty will invite a brief answer to a broad question.

Senator, one more. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Smith. Mr Chairman Senator Carson thanks for the question Yeah litigation risk is definitely something that ranks as a high concern in this environment And I think legislation like this, if it were to become law, is only going to heighten that, I think. You know, as I mentioned, we are strong supporters of having arbitration as an option because of all the, you know, I think it's been mentioned by a number of the witnesses, including myself, because it's very timely and cost-effective, and people can – it doesn't take a lot of time out of their business, and they can get things resolved without going through a lot of court proceedings that get dragged on and on, and that can really be devastating financially for a small business.

Yeah, offhand, I can't think of a particular example or a collective thought, I guess, on that from small businesses. I'd be happy to take that back to our members, though, and get back to you.

So there have been arbitration provisions in insurance enrollment or coverage agreements that will trigger arbitration in the either medical malpractice or health care malpractice setting. And those are infrequent, but I would expect that they may increase if this bill were to pass, if there were punitive damages available and if the arbitrator could be retroactively disqualified. So it it can arise in the professional liability setting.

I heard from both Mr. Smith and Mr. Roybal. They were talking about how arbitration would decrease and court cases would increase. We had already just touched on what that would do for businesses and costs. But I'm thinking also of the taxpayer. You increase court cases and if they going to be backlogged that time that money to the taxpayer Would you concur with that brief concise assessment both Mr Smith and Mr Reubel

Mr. Chairman, Senator, that makes sense to me. Mr. Chairman, this is Jeff Reubel. Yes, I am on the judicial performance for Adams and Broomfield. The studies show they are already way underwater in terms of being able to handle the number of cases, and the increase in smaller cases like this will only exacerbate the problem.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. My name is Jason Spitalnik. I'm a litigation partner in the Denver office of Snell and Wilmer. I spent almost 20 years litigating and arbitrating cases for plaintiffs and defendants, for large companies and small ones, and for individuals. I'm here today as a volunteer member of the Colorado Competitive Council and the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce to recommend that you vote no on this bill. I understand the motivation behind the bill, and I think that the goal of any dispute resolution forum, whether public or private, should be to ensure that the parties win or lose on the merits of their legal arguments and factual positions. It's a legitimate goal, and it's one that I share. But as a working litigator, somebody who arbitrates all the time, I can say with confidence that this bill will not achieve that objective. I'll start with the arbitrator disqualification provision, which as drafted is almost totally unworkable. Section 3 disqualifies arbitrators based on a demonstrated pattern of conduct, but it supplies no standards, no procedures, no evidentiary rules, and no timing as to how that determination gets made. Consider how this plays out. After being sued, a defendant moves to compel arbitration. The plaintiff argues that the selected arbitrator or organization should be disqualified because it discriminates. What's a court supposed to do? Many procedural arbitration questions are legally reserved for arbitrators. So is the court supposed to reserve the plaintiff's challenge to the challenged arbitrator? And whether before the arbitrator or the judge, how is the trial, the trier of fact supposed to assess the allegation when arbitrations and their outcomes are completely private? Would the parties have to hire expensive experts to analyze data and testify? How long will that process take? Will it be subject to appeal? This kind of sideshow will play out in every case before anyone even reaches the merits of the employee or consumer's actual claim. That does not advance a vision of justice in which parties win because of their legal and factual arguments. It simply creates perverse settlement incentives and generates feats for lawyers like me. I see that my time is short, so I'll wrap up my introduction, but I'm, of course, happy to answer questions. I respectfully urge a no vote.

camera come on first why don't you go ahead good afternoon chair and members of the committee my name is stephen gladstone representing the full disclosure act and i am here in support of this bill i support it because it promotes fairness and accountability and dispute resolution however However, when arbitrators are part of the legal ecosystem, yet belong to private networks, it raises serious concerns about conflicts of interest. Is there loyalty to the Constitution or to the Lodge? The real issue is this. We were told this is a free country. However, undisclosed affiliations proliferate our government and justice system. Private guilds, such as the Fraternal Order of Police and the American Bar Association, operate in the shadows. When these affiliations are not transparent, they create the appearance of insider influence and self-protection. Great Britain just made a requirement that Metropolitan Police must disclose if they are Freemasons, and we feel that Colorado should do the same thing. When individuals across the judiciary, law enforcement, the bar, and legislators maintain undisclosed relationships, especially when it involves paying dues, it raises legitimate concerns about conflict of interest, bringing into question ethics laws and sunshine laws. If this legislator is serious about protecting constitutional rights, then transparency must come first for all participants, including arbitrators, because when the legal system is not fully transparent, it protects itself, not the people. The Full Disclosure Act represents a growing demand for transparency, due process, and equal access to justice, which includes the need for full disclosure of all affiliations, public, private, and secret, including arbitrators, litigators, and legislators. That is why the Full Disclosure Act supports this bill.

Hi, can you hear me?

Great. Wonderful. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I'm David Seligman, a workers' rights, civil rights, and consumer protection lawyer, and the executive director of Towards Justice. I've dedicated my career to representing working people in court, taking on the corporations that have stolen from them, ripped them off, spied on them, and otherwise violated their rights. I'm here today in support of HB 1236. I want to emphasize this is an extremely modest bill. It addresses only some of the most egregious ways in which forced arbitration provisions in employment and consumer contracts can be weaponized by bad corporate actors to escape accountability. I've spent much of my career litigating against these provisions. I'm also the author of the Worker and Consumer Justice Enforcement Act, a model state law published by the National Consumer Law Center, parts of which have been enacted in Vermont, New Jersey, California, and elsewhere to mitigate the harms of forced arbitration without the being preempted by the Federal Arbitration Act. I want to be clear that the Federal Arbitration Act, which has been on the books for over a century, was designed to allow parties negotiating at arm's length to agree to a faster, more efficient private forum for resolving their disputes. But over the past few decades, we've seen how a new form of arbitration provision in these fine print employment consumer and contracts with small businesses, contracts that folks have no choice but to enter into when they, you know, join a gym, sign up for a bank account or any number of other things, have been used as a get out of jail free card. And that is extremely dangerous, not only a threat to access to justice, but also a threat to our ability to enforce the laws on the books. These kinds of provisions don't apply to public enforcers like the Attorney General's Office, but the Attorney General's Office does not have the resources to address the full scope of corporate misconduct that we see today. It is essential that we police the most basic and

is Joshua Mantel. I'm the Director of Government Affairs for the Bell Policy Center. I'm here to testify in strong support of HB 1236, and thank you to the sponsors for bringing this bell forward. Reforming the forced arbitration process is fundamentally about putting workers and consumers on more equal footing to large and powerful businesses and corporations. This is the problem with our current arbitration system. Businesses and corporations get to choose the arbiter in the venue, while workers and consumers have to pay exorbitant fees, and it tilts the system toward the already powerful. Arbitration clauses have significantly increased over the last several decades. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the share of workers subject to mandatory arbitration to resolve workplace disputes has risen from 2% in 1992 to more than 55% as of 2018. This is proof that businesses see the value in forcing their workers into the arbitration system because it is more favorable to the businesses. In many ways, the arbitration system can be a better option for workers and consumers than going to court. Action in court can be extremely expensive and time-consuming in ways that can limit people's access to it. But the process should not take advantage of that fact and that it can be a better venue than the courts. Making sure that businesses cannot cherry-pick their favorite arbitrator or someone who has a conflict of interest makes a lot of sense. Making the process more open and fair to all involved is crucial to respecting the rights of all the parties. We appreciate the bill prohibits costs that exceed the cost of filing a claim in court. As mentioned, taking cases to court can be cost and time prohibitive for many people. And one of the important aspects of the arbitration system is that it can be more available to people who are not wealthy and do not have lawyers on retainer. But making sure that the arbitration system continues to be accessible for all has tremendous value for ensuring that workers and consumers have recourse when their rights are violated. We need to completely rethink the way that mandatory arbitration works in our economy. Unfortunately, that is mostly for Congress and the federal government to determine based on current law, but we do have tools in our state to shift the system back towards the middle and give workers and consumers a fair shot when forced into arbitration. We appreciate the sponsor's thought

and we are getting from Ms. Jensen, number 12, right now.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. I move L11 to House Bill 1236.

Yes, Mr. Chair, community members, it changes the timeline for when there are damages for failure to pay out an award from 90 days to 120 days, and it shrinks those damages from treble damages to double damages.

Yes, Mr. Chair, I move L12.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. And this is something that I've discussed with Senator Ball and appreciate his collaboration on this. What this does is it's a lot of renumbering and technical changes at the top, But the main thrust of it is it modifies B at the bottom of page 3 on line 26 to remove the part about prevailing in full or in part of arbitration and just saying this would apply to bringing a claim in arbitration And then it removes all the language that starts on line 27 and continues one through seven on the back This is, I think, cleans up some of the confusion and concerns that we heard about in testimony a little bit as far as the appointment of the arbitrator to serve as a neutral arbitrator and I think makes the bill a little bit tighter and something I can be more comfortable with.

All right.

Mr. Chair, I move House Bill 1236 to the committee of the whole with a favorable recommendation.

As amended.

Senators Carson.

No.

No.

Aye.

Aye.

Respectfully, no.

Aye.

Aye.

We are moving on to House Bill 1281 by Senators Weissman and Hendrickson, who are before us. Who would like to begin?

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the really comprehensive opening from my colleague from Pueblo. I will, I guess, share with the committee how I come to this entire thing. So I'm in my 10th year here. All 10 years I've served on one chamber's Judiciary Committee or the other. and this year, although my first year chairing this committee as the seventh in total, including the House. In all of those years, including I had the chance to serve on an interim committee on sentencing in 2017, I've had occasion to spend a lot of time thinking about our criminal laws, hearing testimony on a lot of bills, considering how our laws line up or may not line up with the general median of comparable laws in other states, sometimes even in other countries, although that's not really relevant here today. Also, more recently, we've had a lot of testimony in this committee in this very room this year and last year specifically about our laws in the vehicular context and the very wide latitude of charges that get filed in that context, including when somebody has died. And we begun to react to that and legislate to that in this committee in particular I think what we want to see in a set of sentencing laws is a degree of alignment between what happened, what did somebody do, how did somebody hurt somebody else, and mental state and consequences. And for me, the common thread in this bill is that we have some places in our criminal statutes where we can achieve better alignment at both ends. There's not a lot to add about the vehicular parts of the bill after what Senator Henriksen said, but very briefly, the introduced of this bill and the introduced of another bill that the committee previously considered, Senate Bill 72, had one thing in common, which was clarifying the applicability of a criminally negligent mental state charge in the vehicular context. My opinion has been that the law already allows that to be charged, but happy to make clarification for the reasons the committee has heard painfully in prior hearings. And then because 72 had moved first, you see some sections of the bill have been amended in conformity with that. In the vehicular context, 1281 proposes some things that were not, and I don't think were ever amended into, 72, to be found section 12 starting at page 9 of the re-engrossed. where this bill comes from is I think we both favor, as you've heard, a degree of latitude, a degree of I don't know, flexibility in the criminal law so that a judge can apply the right sentence to the facts at hand. But too much latitude, too wide a disparity in outcomes, I think leads not to justice but to injustice. I think people have testified to that in this committee room. So what Section 12 proposes is aggravated sentencing in the vehicular context for certain situations, and they're listed on page 9, to prior convictions of DUI or driving reliability impaired, prior offense of vehicular homicide or assault, eluding flight or high speed, basically 100 miles an hour or more. Those would lead to aggravated sentencing in the vehicular homicide context. The part of the bill that I expect that we will spend the most time talking about today is the first part, the first couple of sections proposing adjustments to our what are called extreme indifference homicide charges. those of us who went to law school which is some but not all on this committee will remember from early in criminal law that at common law for longer than this country has been a country murder one was intent and deliberation example making plans lying in wait evidence that somebody had really been thinking about it. Senator Henriksen referred to the heat of passion. Murder one is the opposite of that traditionally in our law. I think going back to the law of England that we inherited when we became a country. I suspect you'd find that in every single state in this country, and I want to be clear that 1281 does not disturb that. We have something that is... in the judgment of us as sponsors and in the bill a bit of an outlier within our Murder 1 statutes, and that is the idea of an extreme indifference charge. Interesting for me is a Supreme Court opinion a couple years ago now. The question that rose to the Supreme Court was whether a jury instruction ought to have been provided trying to unpack a little bit more for the jury. What do we mean by the words in the extreme indifference statute? Just to sort of read the summary of that opinion, the Supreme Court concludes the trial court did not err by refusing to provide the defendant's requested jury instruction defining the term universal malice, which appears among the statutory elements for extreme indifference, first-degree murder. the court reasoned the plain language of the statute should be sufficiently clear to a reasonable person of common intelligence. Without quite saying so, the Supreme Court thereby declined to get into this very tough consequential issue and I think put it back on us in the General Assembly to provide clarity as to the consequences if we choose to do so. I think, zooming out from the bill and the law a little bit for a minute now, as we get into witness testimony, the committee is going to hear some very difficult testimony. The question here is not whether the conduct that people commit that we're talking about here today is deserving of punishment, because the answer is that it is deserving of punishment. And the question is not whether it is deserving of a lot of punishment, because it is deserving of a lot of punishment. The question is just how we as a legislature might want to align our law with what the laws of a lot of the rest of the country have to say. where intent and deliberation are not proven. Again, the prosecution can file that charge, and they can prove it, and they can send somebody away for life. And this bill does not change that. It is never proposed to. So just at the human level, I want the record to be clear that that's where I'm coming from on what we're talking about here. also on the human level. You know, I'm lucky that homicide has not touched my immediate family in the way that it has some people in this room, in the way that it has touched some colleagues that we serve with. But, you know, I will just share here on this subject I have had to be a survivor of crime myself. I am in no way putting that on the level of what we're talking about here. But I've had my place broken into repeatedly. I've had vandalism done. I've had things stolen. I've had to have law enforcement out. Nobody was ever caught. I'm lucky in that I'm okay. People I care about are okay. I mean the only thing that gone for good is the sense of peace of mind I will also share as I think that I have before as it happens, a number of my close friends in life over the years have been survivors of sex assault, and I've seen what that offense does in terms of psychic injury, in terms of self-harm, anorexia, drugs, alcohol, in some cases having been victimized, getting caught up in the criminal legal system themselves, for example, the drug possession charge in what really amounted to self-medication after a grievous injury. In most or all of those cases, you know, I don't know if anybody was ever caught, and I don't know if any of my friends would say that any amount of time for somebody to be sent away would really set them right, would really make them whole. Getting to the purposes of punishment, we have incapacitation. Some people cannot act in a way that is respectful of the rights and safety of others, so they just need to be put away, maybe for a long time. That's one purpose. Another purpose is simply punishment. You have done something really, really wrong. You have hurt somebody. Maybe you've killed somebody. You simply need to be punished for that. Every religion has things to say about that. Every philosophy has things to say about that. And then maybe you have the idea of general deterrence, where we don't want people to do blank, so we will have laws against blank. And this law didn't stop you from doing it, or we wouldn't be filing a charge against you for it, but maybe we'll send a message to the next person who might think about what we're talking about here. So we have all of those purposes in the criminal law. They're all valid, and we can grapple with exactly how much work each of those factors does in any law and any sentence. But for however many years we send somebody away, And again, things we're talking about here today are grievous and people need to go away. And we in the bill say they need to go away for quite a while, like decades, maybe longer. After 10 years hearing hundreds of bills and probably thousands of testimonies, I just don't know that any number of years up to and including life really truly makes somebody whole for what has been taken from them. I don't know that we can think that the criminal law will do that. It will do those other things that I mentioned, and it needs to do them. but that business of I don't know of setting somebody right in a deeper psychic moral way in terms of how the rest of their life is going to go I think that comes down to more than years and brings me back around to it's really best if we can keep these things from happening in the first place Now that a bigger conversation outside of the bill so I will stop there But Mr Chair I appreciate you letting me go on about that But I thought some things were important to say at the outset We'd be happy to take questions. All right. Thank you, bill sponsors. Committee, are there any questions for the bill sponsors?

Senator Wiseman. Thank you. It's a good question, Senator. I think we're both happy to speak to this one. And, Senator, I forget the bill, but we got into a conversation akin to this one, I think, on second reading. perceived line drawing between different folks. I know that some of the opposition to this bill arises out of the idea that we're going to value certain lives more than others. I mean, I don't. We are all born. We have that spark in terms of who are we going to be and what are we going to be able to contribute to the world over the time that we have. I think you're talking about the language at the bottom of page 3. We put that in there because those distinctions are in existing law. And I think they go back many, many years. And those are judgments that have been made previously by the General Assembly, have stayed on the books over the years. it is not the question that this bill proposes is not to revisit those distinctions in terms of children under 12 see a different section of this very section it's not in the bill it's not being changed but it's within that 18.3.102 in terms of calling out peace officers and other first responders see, among other places, 18.3107, not in the bill because not amended. We also have that kind of first responder distinction in the assault statutes, second-degree assault at least. So we are acknowledging that those distinctions have been created and held to by this legislature in the past.

Following up a little bit on Senator Carson's question to the mens rea piece, the way I read the bill is that in a drive-by shooting example, if somebody were to spray bullets into a home or a car or some type of crowd and only one person dies, then they would be eligible for the F2. but if by chance two people die, then it would stay as an F1. Where is the distinction in mens rea with that type of situation?

Senator Hendrickson. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I would add to that, I would agree with everything that my colleague from Aurora said, I would add to that that there is the crime of violence designation and there is the consecutive sentencing mandate that comes with that. So if, to your example, there is one victim and that victim passed away, that would be a Class 2 with a 24 to 48-year sentencing range. If there were, in this example, two victims and one person died, and the other had a serious bodily injury, that's a second victim. That is an attempted extreme indifference. So that carries a consecutive 10 to 32 years. You're now looking at 34 to 70 years in that scenario. If you have two victims where nobody dies, that's two victims, two attempted extreme indifference. you're looking at 20 to 64 years. That would be more severe than 10 to 32 years if there was only one victim who survived that example. I think in each of these iterations of this example, we're seeing how the range fluctuates based on the formula that we've been sort of discussing, which is that combination, it is mental state, yes, but it is mental state and the actual real consequences of that behavior that combined to form the sentencing structure. Thank you.

Senator Weissman. Sure, thanks. Mr. Chair, I'd have to actually look up on my laptop here exactly where 72 is. I had a conversation weeks ago now, I think, with Senator Carson about how upon introduction, proposals to confirm the criminal negligent mental state and vehicular homicide were drafted functionally the same. drafting-wise, just a tiny bit different in our bills. Because that one moved farther, faster, we have conformed to that. I guess a few things going from there. This Bill 1281 contains two sets of substantive proposals that were not within 72. One is the set of aggravators in vehicular homicide beyond what 72 ever proposed, and two, of course, is the extreme indifference provisions that we're talking about. So those would not conflict in any way with 72 because they were never in 72. I haven't had the chance to do a line-by-line comparison, but we have tried to track as to the rest, as to the criminally negligent mental state provisions in vehicular homicide and the conforming amendments in other sections We tried to track that Were the bill to move were this bill to move far along enough some of us around here have seen you know you get a notice from nonpartisan drafting staff where they tell you you know we may need to make this change in this or that bill. In the event that, I mean, precisely the same text were to get to the governor and get signed into law in two different bills, I think it might literally merge in the publications process when they update the statutes and out of our work after this session. Does that help?

Okay, seeing no further questions for the sponsors, we will move now to the witness testimony phase. I've received some panel recommendations from the sponsors. We're going to start with supporter panel, then switch to opposition and alternate back and forth until we've exhausted our list. As the chair noted for the previous bill, we're going to do two minutes per person, followed by a maximum of eight minutes for question and answer, if that's necessary. So first panel, Joe Archenbalt, James Carbock, Justin Marceau, and Dan Meyer. Good evening, I think it is now. Thanks for your patience this afternoon. Whoever at the table would like to begin, please go ahead and introduce yourself, and then your two minutes will start.

Thank you, Chair Roberts.

Thank you. And sir?

All right, committee members, any questions for this panel? Okay, I've seen none. Thank you all so much. Okay, we're going to move to a panel of opposition. DA Michael Allen, DA Brian Mason, and Jacob Friedberg.

DA Mason.

Well, this bill answers that question. It answers it with the numbers 2 and 12. It's first-degree murder if two people are killed, but not if it's only one. It's first-degree murder if it's somebody who's 12 or under, but not if it's someone who's 13. Every life has value and it shouldn't matter how many victims a defendant claims. It should be the actions of that defendant that determine the crime and the punishment. Colorado has painfully experienced more mass shootings than almost any other state that I'm aware of. The legislature should not reduce penalties for people who commit these crimes. I ask this committee to vote no on this bill. Thank you. Mr. Friedberg.

Yeah.

Senator Zamora Wilson.

Mr. Friedberg.

Mr. Friedberg, could you or DA Allen, DA Mason, talk about how these cases look in terms of the defendant being a juvenile or of a younger adult age?

And some of it touched on that this crime, the way it's charged, is confusing to juries. and that we need to make a change in this law because jurors aren't comprehending this type of charge and the elements and the factual scenarios that go into it. Is that your experience? Can you tell us a little bit about how juries view this charge and whether it's more confusing than other types of crimes?

Senator Zamora Wilson.

Thank you. D.A. Allen.

Any other questions? Seeing none, thank you so much to this panel. We appreciate it. Okay, moving back to a panel of proponents, Jen Jones, Maureen Kane, Kevin Lash, and Lucy Ohanian.

Whoever would like to start, please go ahead.

Thank you. Whoever would like to go next.

Thank you, Mr. Lash. Who would like to go next?

Ma'am. All right. Thank you.

Okay, committee members, any questions for this panel? Ms. Ohenian, I'm just curious. Thank you for talking about the other parts of the bill. If the extreme indifference parts of the bill were not part of this bill,

Why? Part of it is that... Because you said that we have a dilemma of charging something really extreme or something that's probation eligible and that you wanted a middle ground. But if we're offering that middle ground as a piece of legislation, then the public defender would oppose it.

Okay. Thank you. Ms. Cain. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

You know, the sentencing ranges will be consecutive. As you know, Mr. Chair, once you have consecutive, you're looking at lots and hundreds of years, as Ms. Jones talked about. So thank you. Yeah, thank you for that, Ms. Kane. I actually don't, if you could point me to it, I don't see anywhere in the bill where it actually mandates that the sentences run consecutively. Is that? Because it's not in where I think people are thinking it is on page four lines, 1 through 4. It does not say it has to be mandatory consecutive.

Okay. And then the examples that you were just pointing out of the charges, I don't think you were, but it sounds like you're implying that district attorneys in those cases were charging something that they did not have a reasonable likelihood of success at trial on, which would be a violation of their ethical obligations as prosecutors.

and that is mostly the view of district attorneys that filed this. But you just cited that as an example of something that's not actually extreme indifference.

I see no further questions. Thank you. All right. Next panel, can we please have Kelly Bartell, Brynn Chase, Nate Marsh, and Courtney Sutton, who is remote. All right. Thank you all. Whoever at the table would like to begin first. Ms. Bartell.

While I understand the intent to ensure that extreme indifference is not misapplied in truly accidental cases, this proposal shifts the focus away from the nature of the conduct and instead ties the consequences to the outcome. Whether someone was injured, how badly they were injured, or whether they died, that is where the bill is deeply flawed. Because in cases like my daughter's, the outcome was not what made the behavior dangerous. the behavior itself was. I want to be very clear. This was not a youthful mistake. This was a pattern of repeated, escalating, deliberate behavior months before. There were similar acts, including throwing a yard statue at a vehicle. On the night my daughter was killed, all three individuals loaded their truck multiple times with large rocks, including the nearly nine-pound rock that killed my daughter Alexa. They didn't act once. They did this over and over and over and over. They drove through neighborhoods throwing rocks at parked cars, then escalated to throwing rocks at moving vehicles. and one of them stated that they intentionally aimed at the drivers. When they saw my daughter's car on that long two-lane road, they accelerated to over 80 to 90 miles an hour. Then a boulder-sized rock was handed to Joseph Koenig, who threw it like a shot put out the driver's side window directly at her. They immediately knew they hit her. Her car went off the road, down an embankment, through a fence, and far into a field. There was no mistaking that something was seriously wrong. They cheered. They whooped in excitement. They turned around multiple times. They went back and took a picture. that is extreme indifference. Now here is why this bill matters. The same behavior throwing large rocks at moving vehicles, aiming at drivers at high speeds could have killed many people. In fact, it nearly did. Other drivers were hit. Windows were shattered. Vehicles were damaged. People were injured One rock struck a headrest just inches from someone else head many of the rocks ended up inside the vehicles The only reason more people didn die is luck But under this bill, the same conduct would be treated differently depending on the outcome, whether someone happened to be injured, how badly, or whether they died. that means the law would no longer fully recognize the danger of the behavior itself. It would say, if no one was injured, it's a lower level felony. If someone is injured, it increases. If someone dies, it becomes something different. But the risk, the choice to engage in life-threatening behavior, was the same every single time. This is the problem. Extreme indifference laws exist specifically to address conduct that creates a grave risk to human life, regardless of how many people were ultimately harmed. This bill moves away from that principle. It reduces accountability for extremely dangerous actions simply because, by chance, the outcome was less severe. I need to say this clearly. Alexa's life mattered. She was my daughter. She was an amazing, beautiful soul who was deeply loved by all of her family. Losing her has left a hole in my life that will never be filled. I ask you to please not pass a law that diminishes the seriousness of the conduct like this or suggests that the value of accountability depends on how many were harmed rather than the danger of the act itself. This isn't just about Alexa. It's about preventing other families from experiencing the kind of loss, this kind of loss. I don't want anyone else to stand in a similar situation as mine and hear that their loved one's life was not enough for extreme indifference. We should hold people accountable for the risks they choose to take with human life, not just the outcome that happens by chance. Please don't take away the tools that recognize the full seriousness of this kind of behavior. Alexa mattered. Her life had value, and it should never be measured by circumstances. Thank you. Thank you so much, Ms. Bartell. I appreciate you being here. Brynn Chase, please go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Brynn Chase. I am a Special Victims Unit prosecutor in the 23rd Judicial District. That is Douglas, Albert, and Lincoln Counties. Prior to that, I spent five years working in Jefferson County, the first judicial district, and I'm here to talk about my role in the prosecution of the case that Ms. Bartell just spoke of. Definitionally, for something to be extreme, it has to exist on the fringes of behavior. this type of crime, this mental state is reserved for the worst and most depraved acts among us We not here to talk about charging inconsistencies or decisions that were made by individual prosecutors in specific cases We here to talk about what that mental state actually requires. And in this case, the sound. I will never forget the sound that that nine-pound boulder made the first time we went to an evidence view. The detective put it out on the table. louder than that. I did that in front of the jurors during trial as well. That sound will live in my mind forever. What will also live in my mind forever are the deranged, awful, twisted, indescribable photos of Alexa Bartel. Her face completely unrecognizable because somebody felt that it would be fun and enjoyable to hurl a boulder at her head while driving 90 miles per hour in the opposite direction. while she was driving. I know that it was for fun because we gained that information from the others who were in the car and another young man who was with these folks prior to them actually going and murdering Alexa. This was planned. This was rehearsed. This was done repeatedly. The person that we convicted of murder in the first degree stated that he did this because he liked to cause chaos. I don't think any other statement could be made to more strongly support the idea that this was an act of extreme indifference. And the jurors flatly rejected the idea that his teenage brain, which they heard extensive testimony about, had anything to do with the ability to negate his mental state. The jurors, the 12 members of the community, agreed that this 18, 19-year-old young man was capable of that. That said, we urge that you vote no on this legislation. Thank you, sir. Thank you. My name is Nate Marsh, and I'm a senior deputy district attorney in the 23rd Judicial District. And I am here to tell you about an individual, an American hero. His name is Lieutenant Colonel Matt Anderson. Lieutenant Colonel Anderson was an Air Force officer. He was a husband and a father of four. His children were 18 months, 3, 8, and 13. And he had just finished up a family outing at the Douglas County Fair and Rodeo. They had stopped at a gas station for gas. His children were in the car and his wife had headed into the gas station to get popsicles for the kids. And he was filling up with gas. And it was at that point in time that his murderer came hurtling through that intersection, crossed five lanes of traffic. And at 45 miles an hour, 0% braking, 98% acceleration, he took his truck right into the SUV of the Anderson family, killing Lieutenant Colonel Anderson in front of his children and causing a brain bleed to his three-year-old son. That act was a series of choices. His murderer spent that time, while Lieutenant Colonel Anderson was his family at the rodeo, He spent it drinking a pint of whiskey and two beers, and he was out. And so he had to go get more. He made all of these choices. We charged him with first-degree murder, extreme indifference, because this was not an accident. This was a conscious choice that had been made over that course of time. And he had been caught before. He had been warned before. He knew exactly what he was doing. and the fact of the matter is we can't charge first degree murder after deliberation here because he wasn't intending to kill Lieutenant Colonel Anderson, there was no animosity. What makes this so extreme and why it justifies a life without parole sentence is because he didn't care who he killed. Lieutenant Colonel Anderson was just the unlucky one who he did kill. I would urge you to vote against this bill. Thank you. And then Ms. Sutton. Thank you and good evening, Chair and the Committee. My name is Courtney Sutton, and I'm the Public Policy Director for COVA, the Colorado Organization for Victim Assistance, and we oppose HB 26-1281. The policy addresses the homicide or attempted homicide of our neighbors, our friends, and our loved ones when an offender exhibits extreme indifference to human life. Surviving family members of these crimes have a mandatory life sentence to the horrific trauma and the unresolved grief that they experience. The bill reduces accountability for defendants who knowingly engage in behavior that demonstrates universal malice and results in death. This policy would produce outcomes or penalties for extreme indifference homicide vary based on factors entirely unrelated to the offender's conduct. First-degree homicide with extreme indifference would only be chargeable if the victim is under 12, a peace officer, emergency medical provider, or firefighter, or if there is a death or injury of two or more people. In a shooting, if one domestic violence victim was killed and one person sustained SBI, this would be considered a second-degree murder. If even one additional victim has SBI, it would be first-degree. We know with domestic violence offenders specifically, they may start with their act targeting their specific victim, and they are not concerned for the life of anyone else standing in their way. We've seen this conduct in a Colorado Springs domestic violence shooting in 2021, killing seven, and more recently in Sharifport, Louisiana, both killing multiple children. You've heard from myself and other advocates for victim survivors that criminal processes can reopen these traumatic wounds. And this showcases another example of that harm throughout the process. Every victim in Colorado, regardless of age, the number of victims involved, their profession deserve equal treatment and justice under the law. Colorado's history with mass shootings, along with the rise in domestic violence homicides that harm additional victims, underscore the importance to maintaining this charge. We strongly urge the committee to vote against this policy. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Sutton. Committee members, any questions for this panel? Senator Carson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, I want to thank Ms. Bartell for coming here. I know everyone in this state was horrified by what happened. and thank you for coming back again here. It's difficult, I'm sure. I know that it must be. My question is for Assistant DA Marsh. So the case you described, if this bill were the law at that time, what would you be left with? And in fact, with Alexa Bartel's case, one person there as well. Who would like to go? Ms. Chase, Mr. Marsh. Thank you Thank you Mr Vice Thank you Senator Carson In the case that I described we would be left with a second murder We would be left with basically this widow this now single mother of four children the message being sent that this death was tragic, but not tragic enough to make it so you don't have to go see the parole board and try to argue about why your husband's killer should stay behind bars. why your life has not been destroyed. We'd be left with second-degree murder, and he would be eligible for parole. The same with, and I'll let Ms. Chase speak to this, but the language of this bill says only one person for second-degree murder. That's insulting to the victims, because every single life is important, and we would be left with second-degree murder again in that case where an individual would be able to be out on parole. Ms. Chase. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Echoing what Mr. Marsh said, yes, we would be left in a position where potentially we could have pursued murder in the second degree, but I do think it's poignant to meditate upon the fact that, ironically, arbitrarily drawn these distinctions is, in fact, indifferent to the value of human life in a way. Trying to delineate what type of life deserves a penalty of life without parole versus what type of life does not is a form of indifference to the value of the lives of those who apparently do not qualify for that. we would be left with potentially a measure of justice but not reflective of the outcome that was merited here. Any other questions for this panel? Okay. Seeing none, I just want to thank you all and especially you, Ms. Bartell, for taking the time to be here and sharing your difficult story. We appreciate you. Okay. Next up, could we please have Megan Downing, David Carrillo, David Kaplan, Sarah Krug. Okay. That will be our panel. We'll start here at the table. Whoever would like to begin, please go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Vice Chair, members of the committee. My name is David Kaplan, and I'm the office head of the Arapahoe Trial Office of the Colorado State Public Defender. I'm here to urge you to adopt House Bill 26-1281, and I'm going to focus on attempted extreme indifference murder in particular. As this committee may or may not know, we are the only state in the country where this particular crime exists. The Supreme Court in the state of New Mexico put it best. This is an illogical charge because as a juror you being asked to find that the defendant intended to perpetrate an unintentional killing we routinely see attempted extreme indifference murder cases charged where the doctrine is abused where the facts don fit the punishment Cases like a case that happened near this Capitol where a mentally ill individual was running from the police down the street with scissors is tackled and the officer tackling the suspect is cut with the scissors. Attempted Extreme indifference murder is routinely charged in Arapahoe County in cases where individuals are trying to get away from law enforcement or from loss prevention officers and drive near the officers while trying to get away. No one is hurt. There was no intention to hurt anyone. But they're not always charged that way. Sometimes those cases are charged as vehicular looting, an F5. Sometimes as reckless endangerment, an M2. I have seen the exact same fact pattern charged both ways. And that's because under the current statutory scheme, the district attorneys have a vast amount of charging discretion and given the extraordinary penalties, a powerful tool to force plea dispositions in circumstances where substantive justice may not be served. It leads to incredibly disparate results. Again, the examples I went through may have been crimes and have proven the defendants certainly may deserve punishment, but they are not attempted extreme indifference murder. This bill provides clear direction to clarify when extreme indifference and attempted extreme indifference murder charges should apply. It does so in a way that's easily understandable to jurors. It provides prosecutors a powerful tool to prosecute the worst of the worst, and I urge you to adopt the bill. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Whoever would like to go next. Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Sarah Krug, and I'm here on behalf of CCDB in support of the bill. I would like to tell you about a client who was charged with eight counts of attempted extreme indifference. First-degree murder, extreme indifference, and attempted first-degree murder, extreme indifference, differ only in respect to whether there is a death. In all other respects, the elements are identical. A brief summary of the facts. My client was in his home. It was a neighborhood that was under construction, and his home was located at the edge of the construction. Three construction workers began to verbally harass my client while he was on his porch and threaten him. Subsequently, we learned that one of these workers had an extensive criminal history for assault. He went into his house, he came out with his .22 rifle, and he fired, to quote the people who were there, a shot into the air and a shot into the ground. No one was injured. and he was charged with eight counts of attempted extreme indifference for every single construction worker that was in the area, not just the three people who were provoking him. When one of the workers called 911, the 911 operator asked, who is he shooting at? And the worker answered, nobody. Now, I'm not here to defend his conduct, which was problematic, but it may have been justified under self-defense. But in order to go to trial, he was facing that mandatory consecutive sentence where he was potentially looking at a 384-year sentence in DOC, a crime where no one was hurt, and for most people, the trial is completely untenable when the consequence of losing is a 384-year DOC sentence. We urge you to adopt this bill, which I think, in the words of the sponsor, would go towards a consistently applying justice. Thanks. Please go ahead. Good afternoon Good afternoon My name is Megan Downing I a private criminal defense attorney at the law firm Rekt Kornfeld where I a shareholder practice largely criminal defense I handle lots of homicide cases, many of the state's highest profile homicide cases in recent years, and lots of traffic cases. I wanted to bring you some examples, additional examples, of how this extreme indifference is applied as a tandem charge to vehicular homicide. We often see them together. In the more aggravated cases of vehicular homicide, defendants face 4 to 12 years or probation. So district attorneys, from my perspective, are challenged with the idea that that is just not enough of a penalty. And so we have this extreme indifference charge tacked on. My first client I wanted to talk to you about is several years ago, early 20s, was caught in the throes of addiction, which as we all know is a DSM-5 disease. He had relapsed over the death of his brother. He was driving far too fast. Very high BAC. He struck and killed a motorcyclist. He was charged in Jefferson County with extreme indifference murder. He was terrified of the idea of life without the possibility of parole, and he is serving 33 years. Fast forward, I started to struggle with this idea of how would juries see this, because we have a crime for this called vehicular homicide. I took a case to trial with strikingly similar facts. An older gentleman driving very high rate of speed, very high BAC, very violent crash that killed a pedestrian. He was convicted of vehicular homicide. The jury rejected extreme indifference murder, and he's serving eight years. the disparity in the application of this charge is wildly unquantifiable. Wildly. I have had other high-profile cases that involved very aggravating factors in the bill that were not charged extreme indifference. And so this creates this compromise where I struggle because the penalties will be so greatly elevated for vehicular homicide where, importantly, there is no mens rea. People who are driving in the throes of addiction are not exercising a rational decision process. They are different than someone who's firing into a crowd, throwing rocks, knowing the circumstances surrounding their conduct and that it is practically certain to kill someone, which is the definition of second-degree murder. I'm happy to take questions, but my time, I think, is almost out. Thank you. Mr. Carrillo, online. Good evening, Chair and members of the committee. My name is David Carrillo. I am the founder of David R. Carrillo Consulting, a paralegal with the Cory Wise Innocence Project and the lead facilitator of legislation inside. I am also an educator and formerly incarcerated individual who served over 30 years in prison after being sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for a crime I was involved in as a teenager. I want to be clear about something. I was not the shooter. I was not the person who committed the most serious act in that case, but I was still sentenced to die in prison, while the actual shooter received 35 years as a result from a plea bargain that could only be offered by the prosecution. That experience shapes everything I bring to you today. During my incarceration, I transformed my life. I earned multiple degrees. I became the first incarcerated individual in the country hired to teach college courses and spent years helping others pursue education and change. I stand here today as proof that people, especially young people, are capable of profound transformation. And yet I Heard it time and time again that young people, especially those labeled as gang involved, need to be locked up forever, that they cannot change. That is simply not true. The young mentality that drives those decisions may remain, but the people themselves often do not. Young people grow. They mature. They change. House Bill 26-1281 matters because it begins to address a critical issue in our law, how we use the concept of extreme indifference. Right now, that doctrine can be applied too broadly. sometimes capturing young people in ways that do not reflect their true level of culpability. This bill creates clearer distinctions. It reserves the most serious charges for the most aggravated circumstances and ensures that cases involving a single death under extreme indifference are treated more profoundly. Is this a complete fix? No, but it is a meaningful and necessary step forward because the question before you today is not just how we punish harm, it is whether our laws are precise enough to recognize the difference between the conduct and circumstances found within individual cases. I respectfully ask you to support House Bill 26-1281. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. Okay, committee members, any questions for this panel? Seeing none, thank you all. Okay. Is there anybody else here in the room that would like to testify in opposition to the bill? Please come forward. Please come forward. And then online, could we have Jeannie Rush? Hodrick Emmerin? No? Okay. Emily Tofte-Nestavl? Great. All right. We'll start here in person at the table, whoever would like to go first. Nope. Click it one more time. Yep. No. Is it on now? Yes. There we go. Good evening, Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today in opposition of HB 1281. My name is Melissa Oaks, and I'm here representing myself. Thirty-three years ago, a disgruntled employee hid in the bathroom of a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant, waited for customers to leave, and then systematically murdered four people. My mother, Margaret Kohlberg, was killed that night alongside Colleen O'Connor, Sylvia Crowell, and Ben Grant. Another victim, Bobby Stevens, was shot in the face and miraculously survived. This is one of the earliest mass shootings of its kind in Colorado, occurring six years before Columbine. It is the only mass shooting that resulted in a death penalty conviction. yet it is rarely included in broader policy discussions or public remembrances. At gunpoint, my mother was forced to open the safe and then shot in the ear. When it appeared that she might still be alive she was shot again in the other ear which her killer later justified by saying he didn want her to suffer adding I knew she was messed up already and she sounded like she was in pain so that why I shot her again Before killing my mother, he had already shot four others in the head. Moments before, Colleen had clasped her hands, sank to her knees, and begged for her life before being shot through the top of her head. This monster said having eye contact with Colleen kind of brought him down and that her pleas pissed him off because he believed she was trying to make him like her. In an interview with Nine News, he said he wasn't bothered that the victims were dead. He admitted that he didn't think that their lives were important. I had no feelings at all. I wanted them dead, and they're dead. Under HB 1281, if my mother had been the sole victim, or if it was just her and Bobby, it would not meet the bill's definition of extreme indifference. Under this framework, Colleen's death would be evaluated differently because she was 17 years old. These distinctions are difficult to reconcile with the inhumanity of this crime and its lifelong impact on victims. I have watched policy decisions shift the balance away from victims. The repeal of the death penalty, followed by the commutation of then-existing death sentences, left us with a loss of faith in the legislative and criminal justice process. Three decades later, our family is still waiting for justice and remains engaged in a never-ending legal proceedings. You see, my mother's killer has recently appealed this case again, even after receiving the gift of life without parole. I urge the committee to carefully consider whether HB 1281 standards reflect a consistent and appropriate approach to accountability and urge you to vote no. Thank you for your time. Thank you for being here. Good evening, Vice Chair Roberts and Senate Judiciary Committee. My name is Andrea Bradbury. I have spent about 30 years in victim services in a variety of positions, and I'm here testifying on behalf of myself today. I will keep this short. I know you guys have been here a long time today. So with my victim advocate heart broken hearing Chair Wiseman, who is not in here right now, but saying when two people get killed, it's worse than when one victim dies. That broke my heart to hear him say that because the number of families that I've worked with over the years, that is not something that's going to be comforting to them. When they lose a loved one, it doesn't matter to them how many other people died. It's their loved one, and that person means something to them. That life means something to them. And them losing that loved one, that's a life sentence. Somebody else who was up here earlier said that. And when that person said that, it really dawned on me that over the years, I have victims' families that reach out to me on a regular basis every year on a victim's anniversary death or on a birthday. Today, in fact, I had a mother that reached out to me because her daughter would have turned 21 today, but she's been gone since 2020. I feel like this bill is minimizing to those who have lost only one person. And what if that person was 14 instead of 11 What if that person I mean there so many what ifs but I feel like the bill is not something that is helpful in a victim's comfort or feeling like there's justice. Thank you, and please oppose this bill. Thank you. Ms. Tofte Nistavl. Thank you, Mr. Chairperson and members of the committee. My name is Emily Tofty-Nastaval, and I'm the Executive Director of the Rocky Mountain Victim Law Center. I'm here in opposition to 1281. I'm here to express our concerns related to the extreme indifference components of this bill, as it truly undermines the fundamental principles of Colorado's justice system, that every human life has equal value under law. For the past 16 years, our organization has worked alongside thousands of victims and surviving family members navigating the aftermath of violent crime, including homicide. What families need from our legal system is fairness, dignity, and the assurance that their loved one's life mattered equally. HB 26-1281 moves Colorado in the opposite direction. As drafted, the bill creates a framework where the severity of extreme indifference homicide charge depends not solely on the conduct of the offender, but on characteristics of the victim or circumstances surrounding the crime. For example, the death of an 11-year-old child in a school shooting would result in a different level of homicide charge than the death of a 12-year-old. It was said earlier that this is already in statute, but that's a misrepresentation. The statute that was referenced goes on to say that the offender is one who is in a position of trust with respect to the victim. That is about the offender's special responsibility to the victim, not an arbitrary characteristic of the victim as written in this law. In a mass casualty event where the conduct rises to first-degree murder could depend on the victim and the number of victims harmed rather than the offender's action. No family should be left the feeling that the value of their loved one's life depended on distinctions like these. That is inconsistent with Colorado's Victims' Rights Act, which promises victims fairness, dignity, and respect. Extreme indiscriminate homicide has a focus on the conduct of showing the disregard for human life generally. HB 1281 shifts the focus away from the offender's conduct and towards assigning different values to victims' lives. Colorado should not create a system where victims life is treated as more worthy of protection than others based on these arbitrary distinctions. For those reasons, I really urge you to vote no on this bill. Thank you so much. Miss Rush.

Yes, we can.

okay uh committee any questions for anyone on this panel seeing none uh thank you for your time thank you ma'am for being here and your patience Okay, next we'll switch back to supporters. Gene Siegel, Kim Chalmers, Alexander Brown, Trudy Geige. Let's see. Rebecca Varney remotely and Amelia Blythe. No? Ms. Blythe's not here. Okay. Is there anybody else here in person or online in support of the bill? Okay. We'll start here at the table, whoever would like to begin.

Thank you for your time. Thank you so much. Ma'am.

Thank you so much. Ms. Siegel, please go ahead.

Thank you so much. Committee members, any questions? I have a question right here. The case involving somebody who was killed with a crowbar, what would have been a more appropriate charge in your opinion?

So how would the passage of this bill have impacted that case at all?

And what was the result of?

okay so for what reason because they didn't have the right person but they chose to charge him

investigation determine it wasn't the right person and and dismiss the case ultimately i think

Right. Okay. Thanks See no further questions Thank you all for your time this evening Okay. Do we have Kazzy Houston online? And Matthew Lunn? And Gene McAllister? All right, Mr. Lund, thank you for your patience. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Ms. Houston?

I'm asking you to vote no today. Thank you. Thank you. And is there anybody else here in person or online final call opposed to the bill? Okay. Committee, any questions for this panel? All right. Seeing none. Thank you both so much. All right. Last call for witnesses on any position. Anybody else online on this bill? No. Okay. With that, thank you everybody for your patience. The witness testimony phase is closed. Bill sponsors, welcome back. Any amendments?

Okay. Any amendments from the committee? Seeing none, the amendment phase is closed.

Senator Hendrickson.

Thank you Senator Weissman Thanks committee for hearing this testimony today and thank you Mr Chair for tagging in for a long bill on our docket

Thank you. That is a proper motion. Are there any comments before we vote?

Thank you.

Ms. Jensen, please poll the committee. Senators Carson.

Doherty.

Henriksen.

Wallace.

Zamora Wilson.

Roberts, I mean Wiseman.

Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair and committee. 1315 is legislation to attempt to respond to the issues that we have seen about parole risk assessment instruments. There has been talk around here. There have been some news articles just for clarity in the criminal legal space and even within DOC. There are a variety of such instruments used. We're really talking here about the question of how somebody is supervised outside by the Division of Adult Parole once they have begun parole and are no longer inside, whether they got there by PED or MRD or whatever. In terms of the substance of the bill and skipping over the deck and the definitions, really the core of the bill is to be found at pages 4 and 5, where we are trying to sort of codify and level up some practices that have begun inside. We know there is about to be an administration transition. We don't want to take for granted the work that might be going on in a substatutory way carrying over. So we are directing some eyes on these processes and procedures with a pretty tight deadline. You'll see August 31 of this year at the top of page five, and then we've directed data to be brought before us at our SMART Act hearings starting next year. We have also encountered the question of access to these kind of instruments, just knowing what is going on. And so you have some language in the back part of the bill, pages five into six, trying to address that. Credit where it's due. Conversations going back months. Rep Soper helped get the ball rolling. He invited me to be part of this quite some time ago. As you'll see, it's now bipartisan in both chambers. I appreciate the senator from Highlands Ranch joining on. There's been some work over in the House, as you can see. There may be a bit more, but we think this is an important part of our overall approach to the criminal legal system. Parole is certainly part of that. We need to make sure that parole supervision is done correctly, accurately, safely. That's what 1315 is about. We're asking for your support tonight. Thank you.

Yes thank you Mr Chairman Thank you to the senator from Aurora our Chairman here Senator Wiseman Yeah I think this is pretty straightforward You know, I was asked by Representative Soper to carry it in the Senate. What he wants to do here I think makes a lot of sense. It came out of our SMART Act hearings and clearly falls within our role to make sure these calculations are being done accurately and however it ends up being done. We may have some amendments on the floor, I think, but I think it's a good bill to move forward with. Thank you.

Senator Carson. Oh, no, we don't have any amendments.

Senator Carson. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move House Bill 1315 to the Committee of the Whole and ask for a favorable vote.

Senators Carson.

Doherty

Henriksen

Wallace

Samora Wilson

Weissman

Mr. Chair

Thank you committee Just because there are a few ongoing conversations We'd prefer to stay off consent

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee for the opportunity to present this bill, which as I know you all know is very personal for me and my community This bill seeks to reduce judicial search warrant response times and establish a duty to report for social media platforms under very specific circumstances This legislation is the result of eight months of painstaking work, including countless meetings with stakeholders and community members. It's been a privilege to work alongside all of the stakeholders in this, Sheriff Marinelli from Jefferson County, Boulder District Attorney Doherty, Representative Story, and the entire Evergreen community on this important piece of legislation. On September 10th of last year, a 16-year-old student opened fire at Evergreen High School, firing approximately 20 rounds over nine minutes, both inside and outside the building. Two students, aged 14 and 18, sustained life-threatening injuries. The community of Evergreen and Conifer remains haunted by trauma and PTSD. Many teachers and students still struggle to return to the building. Families and survivors have demanded that we take meaningful action to ensure no other community endures this horror. So the Anti-Defamation League, they flagged a post foreshadowing the attack as early as July 5, 2025, a full two months before the shooting. Current processes require three separate sequential warrants to identify one user. An IP address, a URL, and user contact information. Social media companies currently have 35 days, that 35 days to respond to each warrant, and they often utilize every single day. This process took roughly 70 days in the Evergreen High School case. The file identifying the shooter reached local law enforcement two days after the tragedy had occurred. Had the process been only three or four days faster, law enforcement would have had the opportunity to interrupt the plan and save lives. Days and hours matter. This bill requires social media companies to comply with search warrants within 24 hours, bringing legal requirements in line with the speed of the internet. It mandates a streamlined process for law enforcement to contact platforms, including a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week staffed hotline. The bill establishes a duty to report by mandating that social media platforms report very specific content to local law enforcement within 24 hours. And I want to note that that section in particular was worked on quite a bit to make sure that First Amendment rights were considered and that it was as narrow as it possibly could be. so it's specifically triggered when a platform takes an adverse action including the restriction, suspension or termination of a user account in response to content that violates platform policies concerning specific and imminent threats and I will note too that it has to be a public post something that is public, not anything that just a member of the general public couldn't see so there are several house amendments to clarify that and tighten that language up and there's been extensive work with many stakeholders agencies CLU, the criminal defense bar, law enforcement, local government, and civic and health care partners, including, you'll see tonight, some amendments that were brought to me by COBOL. So we're working to make sure that they're not impacted. So because the ID process is a sequential three-step warrant process, the difference between a 24-hour and longer response time is not just a few hours. It's six days, extra days of waiting. In the case of the Evergreen shooting, if the search warrant file had arrived just three or four days sooner, as I said before, local law enforcement could have had the window to interrupt or disrupt the shooter's plan. Those few days are the difference between life-saving intervention and life-altering trauma. You're going to hear some pretty powerful testimony tonight from people that have truly been impacted for the rest of their lives. A faster timeline spares students, educators, and parents, the PTSD that stays with the community forever. These billion-dollar industries, social media companies, possess the scale and technology to respond at the speed of a modern world, and we feel a 24-hour response is a practical and necessary standard when lives are on the line. I will let you hear from the witnesses in just a moment, but this is not about restricting speech. It's about ensuring that when a specific imminent threat is identified, the information moves fast enough to save lives. We owe the people of Evergreen, Conifer, and all Colorado residents a system that prioritizes their safety over the convenience of massive social media platforms. It is quite simply about saving lives, and we owe this to our communities. Thank you, Committee. I'm happy to take questions.

Senator Carson? Go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So, Senate Bill 11 we passed earlier in the session. So would it be accurate to say that dealt with criminal activity that's already occurred, and this is to deal with threats that are very specific?

I'm not. You know what? I'm actually not. I know the sponsors could probably answer that question. But I do know that, I will note that we made, I know that Representative Story in the House made some conforming amendments when that passed through because they started at roughly the same time in the process. And we continue to pursue this because it's such an important thing for our community.

Mitchell Perotti.

I believe Jill Benjamin is online.

All right.

My name is Reggie Marnelli. I am the current sheriff of Jefferson County. I wanted to explain to you how this bill came to be. September 10, 2026 is the day of the shooting. It was a Wednesday. On Friday, I received a call from the FBI asking if I had time for a meeting, and when I suggested on Monday, they said no tonight. I met with them late on Friday evening knowing that the news that they were about to give me could not be good because they would not put this meeting off until Monday. It was in that meeting that I found out that the threat had been observed on July 5th with a shooter somewhere in the country that was going to shoot at a school somewhere in the country. The FBI immediately started progression on probable cause and getting judiciary warrants to go after the information needed to find out who, in fact, was making those threats and where. They put in the first search warrant and received the IP address. When they got that information, they then had to put in a second search warrant to get the URL. Once they got the information on the URL, they put in for a third search warrant with the hopes that it would give them either the name and or the address of the person making the threats. And they did, in fact, get the home address of the person making the threats. Unfortunately, that information came in after the shooting on September 10th. It took, as the senator said, over 70 days to get that information due to the lengthy processes. Now I will tell you that the FBI, because of our shooter, who took his own life, we were not able to intervene and help him. There were 19 spinoff cases, 19, that were related to our shooter using digital media exploitation. The FBI did force other social media platforms to produce under the exigency judicial warrants. exigency judicial warrants was not an option starting on July 5th. It was after our shooting. They were able to disrupt numerous, up to 19 other school shootings because of our shooting. These young people have a mixture of ideologies. They are depressed and trying to find themselves in the world. They want to be remembered for something which leads to this competitive behavior, and it's getting more and more competitive, which is why we need to speed up this process. Now, I worked Columbine High School. I have now overseen the shooting at Evergreen High School, and I'm quite frankly done, which is why within minutes of learning this information, there was no doubt in my mind that we had to do something. Now, speaking about the First and the Fourth Amendments, I will go into the Fourth Amendment, which we fought very hard to make sure that we were not violating the Fourth Amendment rights of people. The Fourth Amendment which protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government The way that we wrote this bill was that we do not at any point in time ask social media companies to do the job for us All we ask for them to do is turn over what they have. We're not asking them to search any further. Just give us what they already saw that was on a public platform. Let us then do our jobs to build a case. And if we have the probable cause and we can build the case, then we will go forward and ask for the judicial warrants to go further to build a case. Therefore, social media platforms, because they're private companies, they are not government actors. We are not asking them to be actors on our behalf on this bill. They receive the content on their platform. They detect threats. They then give us what they have, nothing further. In United States v. Wilson, it talks about law enforcement only being able to view the exact files given to them. They must produce a case after seeing those files, which includes search warrants, to get anything further, and law enforcement cannot ask the social media companies to do anything further without a warrant. This is in relation to what is called the private search doctrine. Then again, in the United States versus Reddick, it states that automated scanning by Microsoft is a private search, not a government action. So police viewing the exact same images is allowed. And so that is how we wrote this, to be able to protect the Fourth Amendment rights. And we've worked with social media companies that were willing to speak with us on behalf of this, and we are proud of the product that we came up with. And so I would ask for a yes vote in moving forward with this particular bill. Thank you.

Good evening to the Chair and to the Committee. I'm Mitch Purity, Strategic Services Division Chief for the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office. I speak to you today in strong support of this proposed legislation. During my 35-year tenure, my agency has responded to several shooting incidents that took or injured many lives. Following each of these incidents, the communities are left with the burden of answering of how this could be prevented. Since the shooting at the Columbine in 1999 to Evergreen High School in 2025, technology has changed the way we communicate both positively and negatively. Social media platforms have transformed us as a society. Our reach has grown, our speech has become more public. Even years later, we still fight to disrupt these voices and follow up with the harm to people in our communities. Social media platforms need to do more to assist in disrupting these malicious acts. This bill provides law enforcement with the opportunity to respond to threats and intention to harm others. It is a call to action for the purpose of disrupting and interrupting acts that take and destroy lives. While these acts are often directed towards most vulnerable community members like our children, it often sometimes is even directed towards elected officials and public health officials. Public safety officials as public safety officials we support this bill because it enhances our ability to identify assess and disrupt intimate threats before they result in harm The bill establishes critical communication reporting requirements for social media platform operators creating faster and more reliable pathways for law enforcement to intervene when these individuals express intentions for harm to others. Social media platforms have the unique ability to provide voice to anyone who has an account. Most of these voices and expressions are not criminal in nature. However, some express their desire to imminently harm people. Most social media platforms possess their own community use standards, which tend to align with the social media norms. For example, Meta is committed to making Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger safe spaces as reported by their website. Snap Inc. websites have community standards that indicate that behavior that violates community guidelines are not tolerated in the form of child exploitation, terrorism, and violent extremism.

Good evening, Mr. Chair, members of the committee. My name is Dan Ayton. I'm a commander with 39 years' experience with the Judgment County Sheriff's Office, and I'm here tonight to express strong support for House Bill 1255 because this bill directly strengthens the safety of our communities and our schools. Each day, law enforcement in Colorado faces a growing challenge, threatening and criminal behavior, which often takes place on social media platforms. Whether it's a credible threat against a school or any person in our communities, these cases often hinge on one thing, timely access to information. Currently, social media companies are allowed up to 35 days to respond to a search warrant. And like mentioned before, normally, oftentimes, it's not one search warrant, but multiple search warrants. And as we've seen with the Evergreen High School shooting, that deadline was too long. When platforms delay, ignore, or inconsistently respond to lawful warrants, the consequences fall on our communities and too often on our schools. By straightening compliance expectations and creating a clear framework for accountability, House Bill 1255 helps ensure that social media companies treat these warrants with the urgency they deserve. This isn't about expanding surveillance or giving government new powers. The warrants already exist. The legal process already exists. What's missing is timely cooperation from platforms that hold the data. Right now, some platforms respond quickly, others don't, and some provide incomplete information. That patchwork approach puts Colorado families at risk. House Bill 1255 establishes clear expectation that applies to everyone, ensuring that public safety isn't dependent on which platform the threat happens to appear on. At the heart of House Bill 1255, it's about giving law enforcement agencies the tools they need to respond quickly and effectively to real threats. It's about making sure that when danger emerges online, Colorado isn't left waiting for a response that should have come within hours. Thank you.

Good evening. Good evening, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. My name is Kevin Boss and I serve as our Division Chief of our Criminal Investigations Division. With over 21 years of service, I have spent my entire career dedicated to public service and protecting lives. I am here today in strong support of House Bill 26-1255. In law enforcement, time is not just important. It is often the difference between prevention and tragedy. Every day, investigators encounter threats of violence, exploitation, and harm that are communicated through social media platforms. These platforms have become a central part of how individuals plan, communicate, and sometimes carry out dangerous acts. The challenge we face is not a lack of effort. The challenge is delay. Too often, investigators are forced into a reactive position because critical digital information takes weeks to obtain, as you have heard in the Evergreen case, even when there are clear indicators of imminent danger. Again, it is clearly stated, and you will hear the Evergreen case. House Bill 26-1255 helps close that gap. By requiring social media companies to acknowledge warrants quickly and comply with the defined time frame, this bill gives law enforcement timely access to information needed to act before harm occurs. From an investigative standpoint, this is critical. Serious crimes, such as the tragic Evergreen high school shooting, often leave digital footprints before they happen. As you've heard and as you will hear, this is evident with Evergreen High School. This bill gives law enforcement a better chance to identify suspects sooner, assess risks faster, and intervene during the narrow window when prevention is still possible. Mr. Chair and committee members, please make no mistake. This is not about overreach. Law enforcement must still obtain a warrant, and that warrant must still be supported by a probable cause and approved by a judge. This bill does not sidestep constitutional protection. It simply recognizes the speed of modern threats for the need of a timely response. Most importantly, this bill is about protecting lives. Prevention is the most powerful form of justice we can provide.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you all so much for being here and everything that you do on a daily basis, especially on September 10th and the days after. I'll just start by saying I'm supportive of the bill and appreciate the effort. I just have some technical questions about the example of September 10th as it relates to this bill. So it was the FBI who was doing the investigation. Were they going through the federal court system with their warrants? Because I'm just wondering how this bill could have helped in this situation specifically if we're changing Colorado law, obviously. But how did that happen in terms of jurisdiction?

Yes, through the FBI, that is correct. They had to go through the federal system. And the reason it went through that is at the time, the threats were not pinpointed to Colorado. And that's why that time delay was so significant. I still believe that this bill still impacts at the local level any social media platforms that are even localized here in Colorado. It's important to take that into consideration that there's constantly new and evolving social media platforms, I think, that we see that are always spinning up. And regardless if they're on the national level or the localized level here in Colorado, the ability to still grab that information, had it been a localized case, I can speak firsthand from my investigators 35 days is what the law requires and it doesn happen I watched it myself It does not happen in 35 days Can I also add to that? My first phone call after finding this out was to Boulder District Attorney Michael Doherty, because he and I have worked together before. My next phone call was to Representative Story. my next phone call was to Congresswoman Brittany Pedersen, who has a bill that will be running at the federal level to do the exact same thing that we are asking at the state level.

Sheriff.

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It was mentioned that there was a warrant, and typically the warrant has to be responded by 35 days, and that doesn't happen. I'm just wondering, isn't there penalties for that?

Without knowing what the law penalty is, absolutely. but it consistently happens and there's times where they won't even respond. Companies that we request information from with the search warrants for digital information won't even respond or acknowledge your receipts and so after that 35 day window we even resubmit again asking for that information.

Oh, I messed it up. Sorry. Okay, there we go. Okay. Good evening. My name is Victoria, and my family and I are longtime Evergreen residents. We have a recent Evergreen High School grad, a current student, and a future student. I am PTA and sub in our schools, so keeping kids and staff safe has always been a priority. I also have a duty to report. This summer our son told me in the car Mom this is going to be the best year ever On September 10th our then 15 called at 12 p I never forget his out voice Mom there were gunshots We ran. He texted his sister at the University of Utah, they're shooting up the school. Five minutes later, her classmates told her Charlie Kirk had been assassinated. It was a rough, rough day. In outer green, I drove straight down toward the school. I cannot in words describe the terror that hit as I drove down the dirt road, seeing backpacks, shoes, water bottles that running high schoolers frantically dropped. As I stood trying to find the house where my son and about a dozen other students sheltered, a neighbor was on his porch shouting to everyone there was an active shooter. Later, when the timeline came out, I discovered I was standing in the road above where the shooter had shot Matthew, then himself. And I pray I never have the memory come back of what I saw, because I blacked it out. I gave big hugs to the group of boys I then found. The shock and adrenaline coming from them was startling. One of the boys couldn't get a hold of his EHS staff mom and was quietly falling apart, thinking she might be dead. His younger sibling was at Wilmot in lockdown. The next couple of days, our town launched into hugs, tears, and determination. On September 11th, after our community event, where some of you may have been at Buchanan, a peer mom texted me about Desmond Holly's TikTok account. It had hundreds and hundreds of videos and photos over many months. I reluctantly got the handle to try to understand what was traumatizing our kids. The number of posts and reposts was astounding. I have a screen recording lasting four minutes and ten seconds that scrolls down through the account, not even reaching the bottom. It was horrifying material about violence, school shootings, especially Columbine, Nazi propaganda, George Floyd, and more. From the comments, it was a sickeningly strong community. There were memes and celebration using phrases like heroes. These were all bright red burning flags, and it took over two months for the initial flag of Desmond Holly to become anything. And that was after our community was shattered. Social media companies have an obligation to work with society, not against us. Please pass this bill to keep the people that you help sit here for safe and living lives not filled with recurring nightmares, anxiety attacks, and trauma that continues to last and persist and haunt us. Thank you for sitting here and listening to us, and thank you for your persistent work.

Good evening. My name is Beth Clark, and I live in Evergreen. Thanks for letting me be here to represent my family and my community. My oldest son, Teddy, a 10th grader, was inside Evergreen High School during the shooting on September 10th. Around lunchtime, our family, including my seventh grader, received a text from Teddy that said, I love you guys. We knew there was a shooter at the high school. After that text, we didn't know if Teddy was safe or what felt like forever. Finally, we heard Teddy was okay. He ran to the band room and into the director's office while bullets flew at the room. Nine months later, the shooting still affects my family every single day and nights too. Teddy, who is now 15, has nightmares. We all have anxiety. My seventh grader has panic attacks. The sound of walkie-talkies or announcements at school, lockdown drills, false alarms, midday calls from the school, and even, maybe especially, ordinary school days bring those terrifying moments right back to the surface. The shooter had posted about violent intentions months before the attack. if those eminent threats had been reported locally by the platform that shooting may have been prevented if search warrants were addressed faster the shooting could have been prevented No child should ever have to sit in a room that takes fire like Teddy did No family or sibling should ever have to sit with the kind of fear that mine has. No social media platform should be able to sit on threats or search warrants. Reporting in timely response could have saved our family and our entire community of lifetime of dealing with this trauma. I know we can't change what happened in Evergreen, but we can respond and we can prevent future harms. I respectfully ask for your support of this bill. Thank you for your time.

Hi, my name is Sarah Post. I am a parent of two Evergreen high schoolers. Thank you for your time tonight. to be fully transparent. Being here tonight is not easy. Sharing this story reopens wounds that will take time to heal, and the days ahead will be difficult as a result. But I am here nonetheless, because I believe deeply in the importance of this bill and hope that conviction speaks for itself. On September 10th, my 17-year-old son walked into the hallway to refill his water bottle. He stopped for a moment to talk with a favorite teacher. Seconds later, he heard a loud noise, and just a few feet away, turned to see a gunman fire directly at him. My son ran. He followed his instincts, yelling to warn others as shots followed behind him. He could have been gravely injured. At home, I got a text from my husband, a coach at the school. Shooter in the school. I have our son. Our daughter is running. And terror ran through my body. As I raced to get to my freshman daughter, she was running through a neighborhood, hearing gunshots behind her, surrounded by students who were screaming and crying, unsure of if she was being chased and how close the danger was. This was less than two weeks into her first year of high school. Across town, my 11-year-old sat in the dark, hiding under his desk. That was just one day, but the impact did not end there. In the weeks and months since, I have watched my children carry this with them. My son struggles to sleep. He's on edge and constantly scanning his surroundings, unsure of who might have a gun. My daughter is afraid to be alone and still gets sick from the anxiety. Some days, still just going to school is overwhelming for them. Unable to focus, both were forced to reduce their class loads. They lost their appetites. They lost weight. And now, loud sounds bring a feeling of fear into their bodies. Both of them now spend part of their lives in therapy trying to process something that no child should ever experience As a parent, I feel it too A siren or a loud noise and my body immediately goes into panic and my heart races, my mind in the worst place So I make time for my own healing as well This trauma has changed our family in immeasurable ways The maddening part is knowing that it could have been prevented Had House Bill 1255 been a law there would have been an opportunity to intervene months earlier before a gun was brought into their school and before my children had to run for their lives. So I'm here this evening asking you to act in support of this bill so that other families do not have to live this story. Thank you.

Good evening. Thank you, Chair and Committee. This bill is intended to stop the next school shooting. We all want that. We fully agree on the merits. We all deserve safety at school and everywhere from gun violence. This bill is unfortunately a false promise that police receiving social media reports may prevent gun violence. We deserve solutions, not hypotheticals. First, the users in Colorado provision does not mean anything from a technical standpoint, as most users of Internet products cannot be dependably identified by location without requiring proactive identification. It's an empty requirement. Second, the social media company's decisions around adverse actions remain subjective to the company. A better bill would establish an independent and transparent oversight committee over this decision-making process with each social media company as a requirement to operate in the state of Colorado. Social media companies should be compelled to work with public officials on issues of safety. But this bill hands data to the police with no restrictions on the data's retention, nor its use in other digital surveillance or AI tools that that department may be using for whatever their other purposes are. This matters because many communities in our state, like my own hometown of Aurora, see the police as adversarial to the public good due to their conduct and lack of consequences for officers in, as they like to say, officer-involved violence. This bill risks turning any conduct that a social media company may not like into the permanent criminalization of an individual with no involvement from the public, from any elected element of our elected official, our legislature, or the judicial branch. most critically this bill is a false promise to those who deserve to lead dignified lives without fear of gun violence we should work on real legislation that builds the kind of community that we deserve with real resources oversight over you know being able to care for each other resources for mental health and all of the above rather than adding to the youth to prison pipeline I have unbelievable sympathy my heart breaks I have two children this is my biggest fear as a person this kills me it kills me that it happened down the street from where I live effectively we deserve a bill that might actually solve this problem and prevent something like this from happening in the future I do not believe this bill does that thank you

I apologize for my clothing. I rushed here after a mountain bike team meeting, but I'm happy to be here. On September 10th, after hearing the lockdown alarm at Evergreen High School, I did what I was trained to do. I went out into the hallway looking for kids needing guidance and help. I saw what I thought was a lost student, and I called out to him to come and take shelter in the room I was in. In an instant, a young man pulled out a gun and fired directly at me, missing by just mere inches. That moment changed my life forever. I'm alive today, but the trauma, fear, and the questions will be with me always. Here's what's unbelievable. If I had any information the attack was planned or suspected or any dangerous behavior and I didn't report it, I could be accountable. Why is the law not including these social media companies? Some, I've heard, have made arguments this law violates the Constitution by requiring compelled speech. However, teachers, school staff, counselors, nurses, doctors, dentists, EMTs, firebrivers, social media, law enforcement, clergy, and many, many more are all mandated to report. Anyone with access to children is compelled to act, yet social media platforms and companies that actively seek out youth for profit are exempt. They have unrivaled access, far more influence than any teacher or counselor, but they are not legally required to intervene or report harmful behavior. The other piece of this law is the warrants. Imagine if a law enforcement had a warrant for my home, and I chose when I could comply, I could wait 30 to 70 days, I could turn over what I wanted. I would have to surrender access to my home immediately. Why are we allowing such a level of privilege for these online companies? Our children, our school, our communities deserve more. The system is broken. I'm living with the consequences of that failure every day. And it's not just my story, it's a warning. The laws that protect children must catch up with the digital world. The social media platforms cannot just be above the law. They must be held accountable. This must change with you all now. My resolve is steadfast. Despite the 2.30 a.m. tension, headaches, the nightmares, the anxiety, I put on my teacher badge every day and I go to work for these kids, for their pain and their suffering. And I need you all to have the same resolve. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Tim Burke. Thank you, committee, for allowing me to speak. One of the reasons I'm here this evening is because I am a school shooting survivor myself. It happened when I was in high school, and I can tell you, you don't ever get over it. And with the Sandy Hook shooting, I woke up at like 3 o'clock in the morning. I just knew something was wrong, and I just started crying. And I cried all day, the next day, the next day, and I just couldn't stop crying. And that's what happens to me. We have some very, very serious issues in Colorado. And a group of us came in here about two weeks ago and we met with Mr Jeff Reister who you might know He works in the Attorney General office And I brought up the fact that Mr Marlon Rees who is Jared Polis spouse is one of the people that is most, I mean, I call them domestic terrorists because I don't know what other name to call them. But they send him threatening messages. They are abusive. They make comments about his family. They make comments about his faith. And it's all over. It's not hard to find. So I hope that you can address these things. And the same people also go after Governor Polis and even his mother. And it's horrific. So I'm not going to repeat any of the things they say because it's very disturbing. But thank you so much.

Yes, I have one for myself and one on behalf of a victim's mother.

Good evening, Chair and members of the committee. My name is Courtney Hill, and I serve as a victim services supervisor with the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office. I'm here today in strong support of this bill because it represents something critically important, prevention. Every day I work with victims and survivors whose lives have been permanently altered by violence. I sit with people in the immediate aftermath of trauma when everything feels uncertain, overwhelming, and broken. And one of the hardest parts of my job is having the same conversation over and over. Families ask me, how did this happen? Was something missed? Could this have been prevented? Recently, our community experienced a devastating school shooting. In the aftermath, it became painfully clear that there were warning signs and escalating concerns leading up to the violence. My team of advocates was immediately there on scene and worked tirelessly in the days and months after to help an entire community process not only the trauma itself, but the possibility that intervention may have been able to happen sooner. This is why legislation matters. Too often our systems are focused on reacting after violence has already occurred instead of preventing it before lives are forever changed. We mobilize resources after tragedy. We provide crisis intervention after families have already suffered unimaginable loss, but prevention must become just as important as response. And while conversations like this often focus on mass violence incidents, this issue impacts everyday victims, too. In cases involving stalking, exploitation, domestic violence, crimes against children, human trafficking, social media evidence is often critical to investigations and victim safety. Yet law enforcement agencies regularly wait extended periods of time for search warrants and emergency requests to be returned by social media companies. During those delays, victims continue to suffer. Investigations stall, and lives continue to be permanently altered. For victims, these are not procedural delays. These are real people waiting for protection, answers, and justice. We are very good at reacting to tragedy, unfortunately, especially in Colorado. But we do not have enough to prioritize proactive prevention. We have not done enough to prioritize proactive prevention. As victim advocates, we will always continue to stand by victims and survivors, but no amount of support can undo trauma once violence has already occurred. We cannot continue to build systems that are only designed to respond after irreparable harm has already occurred. Prevention must become just as important as a response. That is why proactive intervention matters. This is why prevention matters. and this is why I urge you to support this legislation. Thank you for your time.

This is on behalf of one of our victims who was shot that day and this is a letter that his mom wrote and I going to try not to be emotional with it I the parent of a survivor a 14 child who walked into Evergreen High School on September 10, 2025, and didn't come home until October. I'm writing in support of the intent of House Bill 26-1255, the social media duty to report and search warrants bill. I'm writing because 67 days is not an abstraction to me. It is a number I carry in my body. On July 5, 2025, a threat was reported to the FBI. A viable warning posted on social media for anyone to see that someone intended to cause harm. Law enforcement was notified the threat was deemed credible. 67 days passed. On September 10, 2025, a 16-year-old who had warned everyone who saw his social media posts that he was going to commit a crime entered my son's school with a weapon and rounds of ammunition. My son did not know this person. He was a child in the hallway to meet his friend for lunch, and he was shot by a stranger whose intentions had been broadcast on social media for months. Hundreds, if not thousands of lives, students, teachers, families, and entire community were fractured in nine minutes that should have never been allowed to happen. No accountability, no sense of urgency, no care for human life. The failure was systemic, and systemic failures demand systemic solutions. That is what this bill represents. the parkland shooter sorry the research is clear according to a peer-reviewed study published in the journal of pediatric health 76 percent of school shooters had posted some form of concerning or disturbing content on social media prior to their attacks these were not whispers in the dark they were public declarations viable or visible on platforms used by millions often ignored the parkland shooter posted on social media that he was going to be a professional school shooter less than six months before he killed 17 people. The warnings are surfacing online consistently and in advance. The legal infrastructure to act on them has not kept pace. This tragedy was 100% preventable if only someone

Thank you. Good evening, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. My name is Sarah Davidon, and I'm the mother of a senior at Evergreen High School, and I'm here in support of House Bill 1255. So on September 10th, my son was coming back from lunch. He was outside of Evergreen High School, watching things unfold when Desmond Holly shot himself. My son is a teenager who should have been thinking about college applications, and instead he witnessed a school shooter's suicide. The public record on the Evergreen shooting is painful to read, not because it's unclear, but because it is so clear. We know the Anti-Defamation League identified Holly's TikTok account and reported it to the FBI in July, two full months before the shooting. We know that the FBI opened an assessment, and we know that despite all of that, the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office didn't have any idea that this student existed as a threat because there was no legal mechanism requiring the platform to tell them. The gap between what was visible on social media and what reached local law enforcement wasn't a gap of effort for sure. It was a gap of law. And I think this bill could close that gap. I want you to know that my family has a 50-year history of working to protect First and Fourth Amendment rights, so I speak today sharing any concerns about protecting these rights. This bill requires platforms to report credibly flagged imminent threats to local law enforcement within 24 hours, not edgy posts. So when a platform has already received a flag about a specific threatening content, that awareness must reach the agency with actual jurisdiction. I'm not a lobbyist. I'm a mother. And this bill asks platforms to do two things. report credibly flagged threats, and to respond to legal warrants on a timeline that reflects urgency. These are not unreasonable demands. This bill wouldn't prevent every school shooting, but if it prevents one, that's enough reason to pass it. And if it can prevent somebody like my son witnessing what he saw, that's enough reason to pass it. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Thank you to members of the chair for staying so late tonight. My name is Ava Serbinski, and I'm a resident of Evergreen, Colorado. and a proud graduate of the high school in 2023. I'm also an older sister to a current freshman at EHS. I work in the community daily as a nanny and I here to testify on behalf of my younger sister Here a picture of her My baby sister was only 14 years old and just 16 school days into her freshman year She was in a new building, completely unfamiliar with the emergency exits, and in the midst of the chaos, a classmate carried her to the local recreation center, where she sheltered until I was able to arrive. My sister had her first panic attack after the shooter found her in the hallway and administered several rounds of bullets at her before she was able to run to safety. I arrived in the area within five minutes after receiving the most alarming text messages I'll ever get in my life, messages from my sister saying that she had to run for her life. While caring for the infant that I currently nanny for, I helped safely shelter students from our neighborhood and nearby homes before later reuniting with my sister at the rec center. I have never hugged her as tightly as I did that day, and I truly don't wish anybody to ever know what that feels like. In the months since that day, my family has carried a heavy burden of trauma, heartache, and still ongoing concern for our safety. As her older sister, I've also watched her incredible strength and resilience. Despite the anxiety and fear she faces on a constant, she continues to show determination each day, choosing to move forward and not letting this trauma define her or limit her future. But I also can't lie, my sister's innocence was stolen from her that day, and she's had to grow up incredibly fast for a 14-year-old. in the months since that day despite the choosing to move forward and not letting this trauma define her limit her future a future all children deserve and a future that can only be protected by the adults that are willing to fight for change. I'm asking for this bill to be passed not only for my sister and the children I care for but for all children and communities so that no one has to experience such a traumatic event that could be prevented. I respectfully urge you to take action in protecting students and schools by supporting this House bill. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Good evening, Chair Wiesman and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. My name is Jenna Coffin, and I'm a survivor and a junior at Evergreen High School. I am here today to testify for the bill HB 26-1255, and I strongly urge you to vote yes. On September 10th, the Evergreen community was shaken. We had an active shooter in our building. Myself and others ran for our lives from a building that should have been a safe place. Some people hid and were horrified about the what-ifs, an event that none of us could have seen coming, except we did. Later, we found out about the search warrants that the FBI requested regarding Desmond Holly's social media activity. He had been stirring up trouble for years before this shooting occurred. Unfortunately, the social media companies didn't respond in time, and an unthinkable event occurred. Two innocent, amazing students were shot, and teachers and students were and still are traumatized over this event. The time is now for this bill to be passed. And if it would have been passed before September 10th, the shooting at Evergreen High School most likely wouldn't have happened. I'm here today to fight for not only my 8-year-old sister, who I pray will never have to go through the things that I have, but I'm here for my community and all the students in schools. Let this bill not only keep students safe, but everyone safe. Your support would reflect a sense of relief for the students, teachers, and families in Evergreen to know that their pain, anxiety, and suffering meant something, and let that something be changed Thank you so much for your time Thank you If you please hold the table We go online then we see if there are questions All right Mr Jost please go ahead

All right. Thank you, Mr. Kohler. Please go ahead.

All right, sir. Thank you. Committee, do we have any questions for any of our witnesses? All right. Seeing none, thank you both for being with us. Thanks for being with us online. All right. Final call. Anyone else wanting to speak to 1255 who's not had a chance? Okay, nobody online. Seeing none, we will close the witness phase. We are to the amendment phase. Looks like Senator Cutter has some amendments for us. We'll give it a moment for Ms. Jensen to circulate these. Tell you what. Senator Cutter, we'll get to more specifically motions in a moment, but maybe just while the hard copies are going around, if you wanted to take the time to describe at a conceptual level 15, 16, and 17. Thank you, Mr. Chair. All of these amendments essentially deal with protecting legally protected health care activities. These are in response to some concerns from Cobalt, just to make sure that we were very specifically calling out legally protected health care so that it didn't get wrapped up in some of these duty-to-report issues. Okay. Senator Wallace, go ahead.

Okay. Senator Wallace, questions?

Thank you for the question. Yeah, they're fine. They were completely satisfied with these amendments, and I was happy to work with them. Okay. All right. Maybe we just go in number order, Senator Cutter. Committee, does everyone now have a hard copy of 15, 16? I want to make sure everybody has the hard copies. 15, 16, and 17. I'm just asking if I want to make sure members have the hard copies before we dive in. All right. I'll take that as a yes. We'll go in order. We'll go in order. If that's okay, Senator Cutter. All right. For motions, Mr. Vice-Chair. Thank you. I move L15. Okay. Good motion. Now, I guess, Senator Cutter, you've given us an overview, but now that members have the amendments will go, we'll go in order and give people a chance to ask questions. Anything more you wanted to say on L15 specifically? No. All right. Members, any questions about L15? Senators Amor Wilson.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well, because that's obviously not the intention of this bill. And we just want to make sure that other laws, other states have other laws that don't treat legally protected health care the same as we do here in Colorado. And we don't have any intention of getting that wrapped up. This is specifically going after threats to individuals that's spelled out pretty explicitly in the bill. And that is not an activity that we want covered, and so we just wanted to make it explicit. Okay. Members, other questions for discussion about L15?

Senator Cutter. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you for the question. This is explicitly dealing with legally protected health care issues. So if a health care professional was threatening an individual outside of their legally protected health care issues in a different realm, then I'm sure that they would be included. It's very specific about activities related to protected health care here in Colorado. Members, other questions for discussion about L-15? Seeing none, is there any objection to the adoption of L-15? Seeing none, L-15 is adopted. Mr. West Chair. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move L-16. All right. Proper motion, Senator Cutter. Okay. Members, questions or discussion about L-16? Sorry, Senator. I'm somewhat just scanning it myself. So you're sort of compressing the operative definition of a social media platform here by just cross-referencing it to existing law. Correct. Okay. Members, questions or discussion about 16? Any objection to the adoption of L-16? Seeing on L-16 is adopted. Mr. Vice Chair. Thank you, Mr. Chair. to move L-17. All right. Proper motion. Senator Cutter, anything you want to add on L-17? Just that first part is, like I said, really narrowing what an adverse action is, trying to get that as very specific as we possibly could. And again, just some language within the context of the bill that discusses how an adverse action doesn include an action taken in response to some legally protected health care Again just trying to make it explicit in different parts of the bill Thank you. Members, questions or discussion about 17? Any objection to the adoption of Bill 17? Seeing none, L-17 has passed. Senator Cutter, further amendments? No. All right. Committee, amendments to 1255. we're inviting amendments to 1255 if any. Okay. Seeing none, the amendment phase is closed. Now wrap up comments. Senator Cutter. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you, committee, for hearing this poll tonight. This was actually more difficult than I realized it would be. You know, I was involved in the early stages of crafting this and then as we do, we go about, you know, I'm in Senate and Rep Story was leading in the house. But it just is very real in this moment. And, you know, my kids were really little. I live sort of between Evergreen High School and Columbine. And my kids were very little when Columbine happened. And it certainly changed the way that they looked at the world and looked at school and the way that we all did. And hearing stories tonight was so powerful. we have got to do something. We have got to do better. And I know we all come here and try to do everything we possibly can to address these kinds of issues. And there's no perfect solutions. I mean, I think those of you who know and work with me know that I struggle over the data privacy and some of the things with social media companies. And I share deep concerns about that. But I think we heard some really powerful commentary tonight about how, you know, if we would, these things are happening online, and if we had some way of identifying them and preventing the violence, you just can't, I can't imagine living through that and having to, you know, I've talked to students throughout my career here, interns and things, who talk about their schools and having to have lockdown drills and buckets in the corner in case they were stuck in their room and needed to use the restroom, really traumatizing things that they just almost take for granted anymore. We've created a really messed up situation. And like I said, there's no perfect solutions. I think we have to do the very best we can to balance rights and freedoms and all of those things, but to give our kids a better world. Everyone should be able to go to school without being afraid. And, of course, this applies to other situations as well. If we can stop violence before it happens, if we can find, identify people that need help and get them that help before it happens and stop them, then that's a great step. And, yeah, I hope that you guys can support this today. I think it would mean a lot to the families and the people who have experienced so much in Evergreen, and I know law enforcement who does their very best every single day to take care of community. So thank you again for hearing this. Thank you, Senator. Let's get a motion, then we'll invite closing comments. Mr. Vice Chair. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move House Bill 1255 as amended to the Committee of the Whole All right Proper motion now Any closing comments from Committee Members Senator Samoa Wilson Thank you Mr Chair Yeah I appreciate those that gave testimony heartbreaking And in this committee, we hear so many heartbreaking stories. and the violence that's out there is horrifying. I do have concerns with this bill. As it was mentioned, we have just passed a bill, Senate Bill 2611,

Members, any other closing comments?

Thank you. Members, any other closing comments?

Thank you. Now Senator Wallace.

And I don't want to give that cover to billion-dollar companies that are dictating and destroying a lot of our society and helping in that. And so I will happily join you as a yes vote today. I hope that we can continue to have these conversations in collaborative and helpful ways. But I'm glad to hear about Cobalt. and I'm very glad to support this legislation. Again, thank you for representing your community in such a noble manner. Thank you. Other closing comments? All right. I'll add my own briefly. Senator, as a blanket statement, I think we as a country, 50 states and Congress, do woefully too little to regulate and legislate the role of the biggest of the big social media platforms and the impacts that they're having on society, partly because of the lobbying pressure they bring into buildings like this one. Analogies are made to the big tobacco cover-up, frankly, that went on for decades. where that industry knew it was creating an addictive dangerous product hid the science lied to the American public lied to policymakers and then got caught finally after decades in the 1990s That much is a bigger conversation but I do find the analogy to have some force To the elements of this bill, I'm thinking back to the testimony we heard many weeks ago now for SB 11. Absolutely outrageous that some of these privileged multi-trillion dollar or multi-billion dollar outfits It's thought that they could just ignore a lawful subpoena or warrant and saying that there even has to be a bill like 11 or the first part of this bill. And, you know, I did do a side-by-side where this bill landed as to 11 is very, very close, 24 hours instead of 72. That is a relatively minor detail that could be sorted out, you know, going forward into the legislative process. I share some of the concerns that have been stated with Section 2 of the bill in deceptively little language. It actually proposes, I think, a profound policy change in terms of the interface, the legislatively mandated interface between these colossal companies that don't have public welfare in mind and law enforcement. I see that we have amended the language to refer only to publicly available content certainly where somebody comes across something and is bothered enough by it or threatened enough by it to report to law enforcement I mean that can happen now and frankly I hope it does and then it on the law enforcement professionals to proceed from there I'm in the same boat with the senator from Pueblo. I've sent nine threats to state patrol this session, and I have lost track of all the other ones that I didn't think cleared the bar for me to ask them to even look further. I have lost track. Every one of those has been, before the judgment call that is made downstream, a judgment call that I've had to make, and those can be tough. We are essentially asking the platforms, social media platforms as defined here, to make those calls. I mean, they're probably going to do it with an AI. We've got another bill for that. But it's an important question, and I deeply fear what could come from doing that wrong. We've already vested way too much power, way too much social license in these platforms, and I fear to vest in them even more. at any rate. You know, we you had requested earlier, you know, could we lay over? Could there be more time? I wish there could be more time. Here we are in what may be the last meeting of this committee, this session. More on that in a second. So there wasn't time. Because of that, there wasn't time for this committee. There's time out there on the floor on second reading. Because of that I will vote to move the bill along today I did want to acknowledge what I think are the points most needful of ongoing discussion And I appreciate everybody staying around as late as you have to bring your community's experience to this place. Motion has been made.

Yes.

Yes.

With reservations, yes.

Aye.

Respectfully, no.

Aye.

Yes. Okay, the vote is 6-1 to proceed to the committee of the whole. Members, thanks for a long afternoon. That is the end of our work. Thank you. As noted, we are now at the end of our agenda. No more bills are assigned and pending to the Judiciary Committee, at least that I know of. Of course, the House lags behind us in getting their work done. So it's possible we'll be meeting again. Normally our time block is Monday. We have one more Monday left. I will keep in touch with everybody best I can as I learn what our ongoing responsibilities might be. At any rate, thank you for today and for all of the weeks up until today. And with that, good night, and judiciary is adjourned.