House State, Civic, Military, & Veterans Affairs [Apr 13, 2026]

Representatives Bottoms.

Carter. Present. Espinosa. Excuse.

Rolick. Here.

Wynn. Aloha.

Clifford. Here.

Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee. House Concurrent Resolution 1002 refers to the voters of Colorado, an amendment to our state constitution to require age verification for adult content images. Half of all American states, Louisiana, Arkansas, Virginia, Utah, Montana, Texas, North Carolina, Indiana, Idaho, Florida, Kentucky, Nebraska, Georgia, Alabama, Kansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, South Carolina, South Dakota, Wyoming, North Dakota, Missouri, Arizona, and Ohio all require age verification for viewing adult content websites, also known as pornographic websites. Currently, 11 states, including Colorado, are considering such age verification, such as the measure that you have before you. You might be asking yourself, there was a bill last year in the Senate that sought to do the same thing. It was bipartisan in both chambers. It failed. What changed between last year and this bill? Really simple. In June of 2025, the United States Supreme Court upheld Texas's age verification, a law in a 6-3 decision in which the justices ruled that states can constitutionally require pornographic companies to verify their consumers' age. The case is Free Speech Coalition Incorporated Against Paxton, Attorney General of Texas, which was a landmark case. Members Politico, a pretty good publication, has described age verification laws as perhaps the quote-unquote most bipartisan laws in the country. Age verification laws helps parents protect their kids by making it harder for minors to access adult content. On the First Amendment, I know that's one thing people have asked. Well, certainly the Supreme Court case that I just talked about is the law on point here. any time that you're touching content that does trigger the First Amendment review under intermediate scrutiny. Such age verification has survived said scrutiny because it only incidentally burdens the protected speech of adults to require age verification prior to viewing pornographic material. House Concurrent Resolution 1002 refers to the people of Colorado to decide on whether there should be a requirement on website owners of pornographic-laden websites to verify their user is over the age of 18. Currently, Colorado law requires a person who is over the age of 21 is the only lawful purchaser of, for example, alcohol, and that we have laws requiring challenging that age. When you're in a bar, a liquor store, or other places of intoxicating beverages are sold. Likewise, under federal law, a person must be 21 or older to purchase tobacco or nicotine products. Once again, our laws require this verification. That's why they're behind the counter and age verified. Medical and recreational cannabis within Colorado is treated the same way. A person must be over the age of 21 to even enter the premises, not just be able to peruse the content. Under federal law, a purchaser of a shotgun or a rifle must prove that they are over the age of 18 to be able to purchase that firearm, and they must prove that they're over the age of 21 to purchase a handgun. To enter a Colorado casino, under our state statutes, you must be 21 or older, and the casino has the requirement to test this. To be able to buy a lottery ticket, including online, the individual must be over the age of 18. and that is something they're required to verify. Without parental consent, you must be 18 years old to get a tattoo, to enter an adult store, a strip club, or an obscene movie cinema. Yes, our statutes still refer to that. You must be 21 years old, and the proprietor must age check you before you enter. Other similar areas to operate a motor vehicle, you must be at least 16 years old, and this can be challenged. Even to open a bank account or to own a credit card without a parental cosigner, the person must be 18 years of age or older, and this is absolutely checked by the banks. So age verification is nothing new. We have required this, but you might be asking what's different? What has changed? The difference is technology. So pornographic content in a bygone era was delivered at a newsstand at a newsstand or an adult cinema. Today, it is delivered through online websites. In an older era of the internet, pornographic content usually required a credit card. As I just read, you would have had to have been over the age of 18, or if it was mom and dad's credit card, by the end of the month, they would have seen that you had just purchased some explicit material. Nowadays, more and more, pornographic content is delivered free of charge, usually having ads or other things is the way they make their money. The fact that you don't have to go to a newsstand or an adult cinema in which there is an age check in place, technology has changed, but it shouldn't mean our ability to protect our kids is no less important or that that has changed. Half the states have already enacted age verification laws. This has stood constitutional muster, and currently another 11 states are already considering age verification laws. You might be asking also, what about our current criminal law? And seeing some of my fellow judiciary members, I also want to answer these questions ahead of time. Colorado has no general statute that requires that a person must be over the age of 18 to view pornography. Instead, the law has focused on making it a crime to allow minors to gain access to a motion picture show where there is sexually explicit material or to sell to a minor newsprint or periodicals from a newsstand frequented by minors or known to be frequented by minors in which there is pornographic content that is being sold. To do either of these would be a Class 2 misdemeanor. In Colorado, a Class 2 misdemeanor is punishable by up to 120 days in the county jail and up to $750 in fines. The court usually would impose probation, community service, or mandatory counseling, but usually not all of this. Also, courts are usually unwilling to grant an extradition order for a misdemeanor Class 2. The reality is extraditions are very expensive, and for something that is such a low penalty, they're usually not going to pursue those. The other area of criminal law that is indirectly on point is intent to promote obscenity to a minor, which is a class 1 misdemeanor, with the intent of knowingly distributing and actually distributing is a class 6 felony. The challenge here is that the intent and promotion is to a minor, meaning the person is under the age of 18. Pornographic websites promote their content to everyone, and it is often possible for our prosecutors and DAs to prove specifically that these websites are promoting exclusively to our minors and not just to a general audience. These websites are really being reckless in checking for their users' age. if they were a newsstand, they would be required to do so under our current laws. Often adult content websites are foreign companies, and foreign not just meaning another state, but foreign meaning a nation outside of the United States, which once again means extradition would be, or only means for compelling a defendant into a Colorado court. While extradition is legally possible for any crime, states rarely pursue extradition for misdemeanors due to the high costs of the extradition order and prosecuting the case. Generally, an extradition will only be pursued if the misdemeanor is for a defendant in a neighboring state and the crime involves domestic violence or an extreme public safety risk. For these reasons, it's important as we move forward as a state that we put it on the ballot. And it's not just for us here as a General Assembly to say what our values are and whether or not companies should be required to age check, it should really be for the people of Colorado. And by adding this to the Constitution at the highest level, we're also saying we want 55% of the population to weigh in and to vote on this, to have this be the law of the land. It's important to protect our kids, and just because technology has changed doesn't mean that our ability to protect our kids has changed. Half of the states are already imposing this. Let's add Colorado to that list. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Rep. Soper, for bringing this forward. It's something that I've been looking to do for quite a while. Can you tell us about what the other states are doing to age verify? What does that look like?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Since there's 24 states that are currently doing this, all 24 states have a slightly different take on this. So some states have what's called a one-third principle, whereas the website has one pornographic content before any sort of a trigger takes place to require It could be a driver license It could be that you have to pay something that involves a credit card being used because that's also one way to check age. There's facial recognition software that exists out there. So there's many different ways in which states are both prescribing how to check a person's age, but also other states are putting the onus really on the company, and the company can decide how that actually looks like, and their users have to decide whether or not they are going to continue to visit that website.

Thank you, and thank you for that. Why bring this to the voters versus just write a bill?

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Representative Bradley. To me, it's important that something like this that is really a statement of our values as a state, that the people weigh in on. To me, this is such a weighty issue that really everyone in our state should have the ability to have a say because we have many other areas in which we require age verification. Some of those are federal, some are state. But to have this in our state constitution with the people having voted on that really does put a statement as to what our state values.

Rep. Soper, if adopted into the state constitution, how feasible is it to enforce this change?

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Representative Ricks. Well, it certainly would be within our state constitution, so it would require follow-up implementing legislation by the General Assembly because, as you can see, this is pretty broad. You don't want to be overly prescriptive within the constitution. In terms of enforcement, that would be really for the General Assembly as they adopt implementing legislation in the future for what those penalties would look like, what tools they would be willing to give to prosecutors or to the Attorney General. So it really is up to the future General Assembly when they're enacting implementing legislation.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Representative, how many of the states that you've talked about have actually put this in their constitution as opposed to creating statutes, which we could do with or without this resolution going to the voters?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Representative Espinoza. Out of all the questions I prepared for, I will admit that slipped through the cracks, to be brutally honest. I am going to take a wild guess that probably very few have considered the constitutional route.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Representative Silver, for presenting this bill. My question is about VPNs. I think we all are aware that a lot of folks tend to use VPNs, which are private networks, where they basically pay a bit of a subscription fee for a website to basically have a proxy. The proxy then goes through Sweden, wherever, another country, and they basically bypass this. VPN has been used before and I guess my question is what can this bill do to deter VPN use for or proxy use for circumventing this potential bill?

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Representative Wynn. Excellent question, one that has been kicked around a lot. VPNs are the Achilles heel of any sort of age verification for adult content. And it doesn't matter if you're talking, you know, a pornographic website or someone who's looking at alcohol websites or tobacco websites or firearm websites that also are supposed to have some sort of an age verification. The challenge there is, yes, they exist right now, but I believe technology is also changing and that while they may exist today at this moment in time, they will not always be in place the way they are. We will be back to where there will be much more of a geographic locator to where a person can't appear to be in one country but actually be in another virtually using a VPN. VPN. This has always been the challenge of the Internet and the new frontier. I mean, just like going back to how technology changed. It used to be to view adult content, it had to be in a periodical, a newspaper, a magazine, or a VHS. And then as technology changed, so did people find other ways to be able to get around the laws that were enacted. So I believe VPNs certainly are a weakness today, but you also still have to pay. I mean, I believe every VPN requires some sort of a monetary payment. So, I mean, it means that either the miner found some way to get a credit card or their parents are okay with the VPN, and in that case, the parents should have a little bit more oversight in their kids' activities, especially when they're looking at the credit card or debit card statements, then just passing it off is okay. So, I mean, really, even with a VPN, there is still a mechanism that, I mean, the miner, I mean, had to work incredibly hard to get around that.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I appreciate that question. So because this is a constitutional amendment being proposed for the Constitution, similar to the answer to Representative Ricks, The General Assembly will have to have implementing legislation if they want to be that prescriptive. Otherwise, it would fall to the website company to be able to establish whatever means necessary to satisfy that they have adequately checked the user is over the age of 18.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So currently, to show an obscene film, an adult content film, they already have to engage in an age check. I mean, that's already a criminal law within Colorado. This definition already is within statute. It just so happens that some of our criminal code is, you know, laden with words from the past, such as newsstand, motion picture show.

Yeah, so while we don't say pornographic in other places in Colorado law, this does come from our criminal code where we do talk about sexually explicit material. And so this is an accepted definition that does exist within our criminal code. I mean, I was just going to say that already, I mean, if an adult is renting a pornographic video and showing that to a minor, I mean, I would think under, you know, yeah, 18.7.104, we would be able to prosecute them as a felon. because they're distributing that adult content to a minor. They know it's a minor, and our DAs would have the full power to prosecute that person for a felony class 6.

No. So pornography continues to exist in America. It continues to exist even in the states that require age verification. Instead, these companies have complied with the law that has been adopted in those states. It continues to be there. I know the industry itself has wildly fought back. They have run ad campaigns in those states. I fully expect them to probably run an ad campaign against me. But what I will say is they have found a way to comply even though they don't like it.

Thank you. Can you hear me okay?

My name is Colleen Enos, and I represent Christian Home Educators of Colorado. We support home discipleship that is Christ-centered, parent-directed, and free from government control. We would urge a yes vote on HCR 26-1002. half of all states require pornography companies to verify the ages of their online consumers. Age verification laws help parents protect their kids by making it harder for minors to access adult content online. On June 27, 2025, the Supreme Court upheld Texas's age verification legislation in a 6-3 decision with the justices ruling that states can constitutionally require pornography companies to verify consumers ages. Justice Thomas said adults have no first amendment right to avoid age verification. Any burden on adults is therefore incidental to regulating activity not protected by the first amendment. The justices ruled that intermediate scrutiny could be used with a law that serves a compelling government interest without burdening substantially more speech than necessary to serve that purpose. Justice Thomas also noted that states not only have an undeniable interest in protecting children from obscenity, but long-standing constitutional authority to use age verification laws to fulfill that interest. States have long used age verification requirements to reconcile their interest in protecting children from sexual material. Viewers of pornography help to create the demand for sex trafficking, and sex trafficking provides a supply for pornography. Porn also desensitizes viewers to sexual violence. In May 2023, the Surgeon General issued a statement of advisory called Effects of Social media on youth mental health. The organization Culture Reframed suggests that porn radically undermines the healthy development of children and youth and contributes to increasing levels of sexual inequality, dysfunction, loneliness, major depression, and violence, and has referred to porn as the public health crisis of the digital age. Colorado adults universally recognize the harm that pornography exposure can cause children. They have the right to vote on this common sense

thank you so much for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Cody Davis. I'm a Mesa County Commissioner, but today I'm here as a father. My wife and I have been foster parents for nearly 15 years, had 18 kids coming in and out of our home and had the blessing of adopting three of those beautiful kiddos. To be honest with you, my heart breaks for this generation and the technology that they face today. I'm a libertarian at heart, and I believe government should stay out of their lives whenever possible. Most Coloradans value freedom and personal responsibility, as do I, but protecting kids from clear, proven harm isn't overreaching my view. It's a basic duty. We already set firm age limits for minors. Rep. Soper has mentioned many of them, but 18 to buy a firearm, 21 to buy alcohol or marijuana. There's training and age requirements for driving and military service. These are safeguards that exist because young minds are not fully developed. Pornography once followed that same common sense rule. It was for adults only. You had to be 18 to grab a magazine at the corner store. Today, the most violent, degrading, and extreme content is one click away. often discovered accidentally on a parent's phone by a curious child, or their own phone for that matter. Here's the inconsistency in Colorado. You can't legally give a child marijuana edibles. If an adult lets a kid accidentally eat one, they can face felony charges. Yet, a child can pick up a smartphone, stumble into pornography, full of violence and exploitation, and spiral into addiction, isolation, and depression, and warped ideas about what intimacy and relationships should be. So where's the consistency? Studies show, and they're getting broader and broader nowadays and more accessible, the average age of first porn exposure is around 10, with many being much earlier. They aren't just seeing nudity. They're watching aggressive, dehumanizing acts that face their developing brains, that shape their developing brains and expectations of sex. of sex. I'm not here to judge adult choices. Adults can decide for themselves, but for children, it is entirely reasonable to draw a clear line. You should be 18 before being exposed to addictive, harmful material. If we don't set the standard, I believe porn will. Right now, a 10-year-old boy is quietly absorbing scenes that teach him that women are objects and that aggression equals excitement. He's learning these lessons long before he understands consent or respect. Right now, a 12-year-old girl is comparing her natural developing body to the surgically enhanced airbrushed performer she sees daily, already feeling inadequate, ashamed, and convinced she'll never measure up. Right now, a teenage boy is struggling to feel aroused or connected during normal real-life moments with a girlfriend because his brain has been trained by endless escalation and novelty, leaving him emotionally numb and isolated even when he's not alone. We restrict guns, drugs, alcohol, and driving to protect young minds. Why treat the most accessible, addictive, and relationally destructive content any different way?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I was able to research Representative Espinoza's question. Do you want to save that for your closing remarks? No, I feel like I should say it still in kind of the, I guess, testimony phase.

Okay. Then I'll save that.

Okay.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Normally, I don't answer, I guess, questions in closing remarks, but I will in this case. Representative Espinoza, I was able to track down an answer to your question. And no other states have put this in their constitution. But what I will say is something that is so fundamental, as you heard Commissioner Davis talk about. His testimony was incredibly compelling, that we want to have a society where young people have respect for each other. Young men have respect for women. We don't have women changing their view of the world based on how they're seeing an image online in a pornographic video. If there's one thing that we as a society have a duty to protect, it's our most vulnerable. We can't put a price on the innocence of a childhood. When you're over the age of 18 or 21, depending on what you're talking about, you become an adult. You can make decisions freely. But for that individual, give them the opportunity to grow up and to really be a kid. But once it's a very addictive content that continues the luring, as you heard Ms. Enos talk about, that it is a public health crisis of the digital age, highly addictive. individuals go back over and over again. It's not just like one time and it's done. And that's why having age verification will stop everyone. As Representative Wynn was asking about VPNs. There's going to be obviously some that fall through the cracks. It still takes a credit card. You have to be over the age of 18 to do that. So there are definitely, you know, to anything we do, challenges. But what I can say is this is one of the most important things we can do here in Colorado to move forward. And it's not about us in this room saying yes or no. I mean, it is to put it on the ballot. but it really is asking the people of Colorado, how do you feel about this issue? And I want everyone to be able to have a free conscience knowing that it really is placing this on the ballot, asking the people, is this really where your values are? Because no other state has done this. I believe this makes Colorado unique. We've always been unique. But we're also a state that, unlike other states, we ask the people, what are your values? and to deny the people the ability to weigh in on this would be wrong, especially in light of the fact that last June was when the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on this exact issue on point that this is allowed by the states. It does pass First Amendment muster. And for those reasons I would ask for a yes vote Thank you Thank you very much Vice Chair Clifford Thank you Madam Chair I move House Concurrent Resolution 261002 to the Committee of the Whole with a favorable

Representative Bradley. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the bill sponsor. You said something I think very crucial that we need men to have respect for women and all avenues. Boy, that hits home, especially for me right now. So thank you for stating that on the record. Half states already are doing this. 11 states are thinking about doing this. All the age verification that we need to keep our children safe for every other thing. The list that you had, I wrote down really quickly. I think we need to keep our kids safe. AI laws we're putting forward every day, it seems like, in this building for mental health, for professional provider care relief. We're trying to get in alignment with that. And I think that you not bringing a bill forward, but putting it out to the voters to ask them, you know, how do you feel? How do you feel about this? Because I will tell you with four boys, this has become a serious problem. And as a mom who is a fierce mama bear, you might not agree with my policy, but you must agree that I am a fierce mama bear who tries to protect her kids, who puts up guardrails, who puts up safety things in place. there's always a way to get around it. And the companies need to have some sort of guardrail for these minors. They can make their money on people that are older. They are billion dollar companies and minors should not pay the consequences. When I was looking into this for my digital media bill and the amount of domestic violence increases because kids start looking at porn at the age of 12 is disgusting. and just it's not something that should be allowed to happen, that these boys and girls think that this is the way they should be treated. This billion-dollar industry should have safeguards. Again, they can make their money on adults. We try to protect children from all other things. We should be protecting them from this as well.

Representative Espinoza. Thank you, Madam Chair. Representative Sober, the reason that I asked about the constitutionality is that I think that we sometimes become very overzealous in the state, and our Constitution, I believe, frankly, which includes the number of pages or paper having to be used every day and the amount of paper that we use in this building being in our Constitution and not being able to take those out. Especially in the light of the technology that you've described, I think trying to put this into the Constitution without any definition for the public what it means does not give future generations of legislators any direction on how this should be enforced or implemented. I know occasionally I let people know what some of my background is, and let me just say in this area, when I was a very young lawyer and working for the city of Salt Lake City, I was the obscenity prosecutor for Salt Lake City. I was cross-deputized to do federal, local, and state enforcement of obscenity laws. So looking at this resolution, I'm also concerned with the very, very broad definition, especially as things have also evolved a lot. A, when I was doing that prosecution, it was in Salt Lake, so you might imagine in the state of Utah, and the standard at the time being you know it when you see it. It was a very narrow area of access that was even allowed in the state, even in terms of an art studio which showed a movie that we had to look at frame by frame to make a determination whether it had been an inadvertent or deliberate depiction of one part of the physical body to make a determination whether it fit the definition that was in that statute. Passing something that says sexually explicit themes, when I see every day on Netflix that there's a warning that comes up of smoking, language, sexually explicit material, gives me grave concern about what it might mean for the distribution in the state of basic kinds of cable or other information that could come across. And those warnings are there for a reason, to help parents do exactly what you say, keep that material away from children, and in that context. But the way the resolution is drafted, I don't know that without doing legislation, which I think those other 24 states are doing, providing the definitions and the guardrails, that this is a helpful bill at this time. So for those reasons, I just want to say I will be a no today, even though I strongly support the notion of protecting people at earlier ages from exposure to this information, because I do think our brains are not always capable of receiving that information. But I also believe there is so much in terms of that, especially the specially explicit themes determination, that creates real concerns for me in terms of the broadness of what the public might do and even ascertaining whether they should vote no or yes or no on this as a constitutional inclusion in our laws.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I echo a little bit of both of what my colleagues said. I would vote yes on a bill. in the General Assembly that required age verification for minors for pornographic material. We did not get to vote on that in the House last year. I think that was a Senate bill. I think it died over there. So generally speaking, what you're trying to do, I'm a yes on. I am a no on trying to do this both in a ballot measure and in the Constitution. it's just a weird place to try to put policy in the Constitution. And I have problems with it already where it exists that way to begin with. I don't think that the voters of the state will have any issues at all with us adopting legislation or having laws on the books that would require this. And, again, I would support this as a regular measure. if there is something that comes back next year you guys can hold me to that on the flip side I am not at all okay for one more ballot measure that is one more confusing thing for voters to have to answer that doesn't give a clear framework for exactly what we're trying to talk about here and or doesn't allow us to change things over time you know as this technology changes I can tell you what exists for pornography today is certainly not what was what you described when I was a teen, you know, there was the gas station or fishing store or whatever rack behind the counter with a, you know, black cover on the front. And I can remember as a child wondering what they were, but they were far out of my reach. That is not what exists today. And I think that that is problematic in a number of ways. And I do think that there should be a way to make sure that that content, for all content on the Internet, I don't know how we're ever going to figure that out as age appropriate or that we have some way of managing that in an age appropriate way. And we certainly are failing at that currently. So I see laws to get this tightened up as being fundamental in the future. I'm surprised that we don't have federal law that is engaging in this since this is certainly not just a Colorado concern. But again, this is something that if we put it in the Constitution again and things change over time, then we're forced to send something back to the voters to make a change. So I will be a no on the particular endeavor. And if for some reason there does become a bill that is the other way, I will support it.

Representative Luck. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you for bringing this issue forward. like my colleague I have been talking to others who have wanted to do things in this space so I appreciate that I share the concerns related to this going to the constitution that being said I am going to be a yes vote today because I think that the issue itself deserves attention and I don't believe that the people understand the severity of impact that pornography has on the minds of individuals and their long-term health and the long-term health of society. Many of the things that we struggle with in this building in some way, shape, or form can be linked back to porn addictions that are started in youth. And so I am going to be just frankly candid. Understanding the amount of dollars that are behind this particular industry, I'm not sure that a ballot initiative would actually succeed because of the way that things work in the political realm.

Representatives Bottoms.

Bradley.

Carter respectfully now Espinoza I'm respectfully now for a yes frolic respectfully no I'm sorry for a you or yes luck yes when respectfully no bricks no no no madam chair respectfully no that motion

House Concurrent Resolution 1002 with a reverse roll call vote. Second. Seconded by Representative