Sweltering afternoon heat and a speaker that had run out of charge did not stop a group of Denver advocates and policymakers from declaring their intent to pass an ordinance to make the city a safe haven for transgender people during a Wednesday rally.
“We asked over 500 people across the state of Colorado what their concerns were. And even before we knew what the federal administration was going to be, there were concerns that the federal government or hostile states may try and use information from the state of Colorado, which has become a safe harbor for trans people, to extradite people, to prosecute people, and to continue to persecute trans people,” said Z Williams from the Bread & Roses Legal Center, a social-justice oriented law firm that helped organize the rally and is pushing for the ordinance. “And so after we passed the groundbreaking Kelly Loving Act and the Colorado state legislature, we came back to Denver and said there is more to do and we need people who are willing to do it.”
The rally came as the trans safety ordinance was in the final stages of being drafted. Denver City Councilmembers Shontel Lewis, Stacie Gilmore, and Sarah Parady will formally introduce the ordinance next month, according to organizers.
The proposed ordinance would aim to shield transgender people from federal persecution by banning the city from sharing resources and information with the federal government as it attempts to carry out policies targeting transgender people. It would also remove some unnecessary documentation of residents’ sex and gender in city records.
“At this time, we know that Colorado and especially Denver are safe havens for people who are really being affected in serious, dangerous ways in other states, and we want to show a model of what city councils can do across this country to protect our loved ones, our children, our friends, and our family,” said Councilwoman Stacie Gilmore at the rally.
“Across this country, we are watching a coordinated campaign to erase transgender, non-binary, and gender-expressive people from our public life. Their health care is under attack, their identities are being legislated, their humanity is debated in meeting rooms, on television screens, and in courtrooms by people who never know what it means to walk in their shoes. And let’s be clear about what’s happening,” said Councilwoman Shontel Lewis. “This is not politics. This is not a difference of opinion. This is about whether people in our country get to live freely, safely, and with dignity.”
From Trump’s first day in office, the federal government has been engaged in an ideological crusade to push trans people out of public life. In one recent example, the Department of Justice demanded that more than 20 hospitals across the country hand over all records on minor patients who had received gender-affirming care.
Colorado has been deeply impacted by this, with Children’s Hospital Colorado suspending youth gender-affirming care in response to federal threats; even after the state Supreme Court ruled this month that Children’s Hospital must resume offering this health care, the hospital announced that all of its doctors were refusing to actually do so for fear of criminal prosecution.
“This federal government has tried to create a culture of targeting individuals and making them feel unsafe, and here we will protect them,” said Ashley Cordero, an attorney at Del Pueblo Law and member of the Colorado LGBTQ Bar Association who helped draft the ordinance. “When the federal government demonstrates its intent to target and discriminate against its own people, here in Denver, we have a history and tradition of standing up and fighting back. This ordinance mirrors similar protections that we have taken for our immigrant neighbors and community, and continues to promote values that we’ve already established.”
“History has taught us over and over again. When governments begin targeting one community, they rarely stop there. Every generation is asked a question. When people are under attack, where do you stand?” said Lewis. “I know where I stand, I know where Councilwoman Gilmore stands. We stand with our transgender community, we stand with our non-binary community, we stand our gender-expressive community, not because it’s politically convenient, but because it is morally right.”
Polling from the Movement Advancement Project in 2025 showed that, in less than a year since Trump’s victory in 2024, nine percent of transgender people had relocated to a different state as a direct result of LGBTQ-related policies. Colorado’s existing LGBTQ protections have meant that many trans people fleeing hostile legislation in their home states have come here.
“It’s helping to have protections for people, especially in a time when our federal government is targeting people like me,” said Saga Romig, an advocate who fled her home state of Kansas for Denver. Earlier this year, Kansas’s state legislature passed a bill revoking driver’s licenses from transgender people and banning them from using bathrooms that don’t match their assigned sex at birth. “And that’s one of my biggest fears is that if that information has gotten a hold of by bad actors that I can be targeted just for being trans, and it’s already happening all across the nation.”
“It’s mind-boggling to me how more cities haven’t stood up for their trans community,” said Maya Blasingame, a local community advocate. “… Pride is an uprising. We have lost so many leaders in this movement. So many trans people in this country have taken their lives because of the fear that they’re facing at home, in a place of most freedom, we’re taking it away. People who say that we shouldn’t be here are fighting for parents’ rights, for protecting children, but what about the children that you’re outcasting?”
Colorado’s trans community is facing threats within the state as well as from the federal government, with a Christian-right group having recently collected enough signatures to qualify a trans sports ban and a ban on some youth gender-affirming care for Colorado’s November ballot.
“Let us be courageous together, and let’s make sure history remembers that when transgender, non-binary, and gender-independent people were under attack, Denver did not look away. Denver stood up,” said Lewis.
Edit 6/27: A previous version of this article incorrectly named Ms. Romig. The Colorado Times Recorder regrets the error.
