This week marked the beginning of Colorado’s 175th legislative session, and state lawmakers already had a number of bills ready to be introduced. Among the bills filed is the newest attempt at anti-trans legislation by Colorado Republicans.
Introduced by state Rep. Scott Bottoms (R-Colorado Springs) and state Sen. Mark Baisley (R-Roxborough Park), HB25-1086 “Malpractice Insurers Gender-Affirming Care Minors” would affect how insurers are able to issue and revoke medical malpractice insurance, specifically as it applies to healthcare providers that offer gender-affirming care. The bill has been assigned to the House Health & Human Services Committee for review.
Medical malpractice insurance is used to shield healthcare providers from potential malpractice lawsuits over allegations of neglect or injury to patients. Colorado law requires that all licensed physicians must maintain malpractice insurance coverage.
Under normal circumstances, Colorado does not allow insurers to pick and choose whether a client is eligible for malpractice insurance. The bill, if it somehow passed, would carve out an exception, allowing insurers to revoke or refuse to provide malpractice insurance to, or increase premiums for, providers who offer gender-affirming care to minors under 18. Effectively, this would push doctors to stop offering gender-affirming care or risk losing their insurance and potentially their license.
Gender-affirming care has undergone rigorous scientific review, and has been shown to have large benefits for trans youths. Republicans campaigning against rights for trans people have, in the past several years, attempted to paint gender-affirming care practices as dubiously effective, potentially dangerous, and in some cases permanently scarring. Most if not all medical interventions can cause undesired side effects, but for gender-affirming care those side effects are usually reversible.
Bottoms, a pastor at Colorado Spring’s Church at Briargate, has made bills like this a focus of his tenure in the legislature. Additionally, Baisley, who teaches at Woodland Park’s Charis Bible College, may be weighing a run for Governor in 2026.
State Rep. Brandi Bradley (R-Littleton) says she is also planning on introducing at least one piece of anti-trans legislation. In a newsletter sent out Monday, she teased a bill titled “Defending Youth from Sterilization, Psychological Harm, and Irreversible Alteration,” or “DYSPHORIA” for short.
The newsletter referenced the pejorative, and decades-old, stereotype that LGBTQ adults are predators who “groom” children for sex. The bill “aims to protect children from being groomed into life-altering and harmful decisions,” Bradley wrote in the newsletter. Bradley also leads a Douglas County chapter of Moms for Liberty, a national group which the extremism research group The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated as an anti-government extremist group for its opposition to LGBTQ+ and racially inclusive school curricula.
Colorado Democrats’ legislative trifecta will likely prove an insurmountable obstacle for these bills and others like them. Still, Colorado Republicans’ anti-trans efforts in the first days of 2025 have joined a fusillade of similar bills by Republicans across the country. Nationally, over 100 bills targeting trans people were filed across 13 states in advance of their 2025 legislative sessions.
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