By Eva Terry
KEY POINTS
- Colorado’s Kelly Loving Act could allow the state to revoke custody from parents who misgender their children by defining it as ‘coercive control.’
- The bill has passed the Colorado House and is now headed to the Democrat-majority Senate before potentially reaching Gov. Jared Polis’ desk.
- Similar legislation in Canada has resulted in severe penalties, including imprisonment for a father who misgendered his daughter.
A bill in Colorado is making its way through the state legislature that would create legal grounds for the state to revoke custody of parents who misgender their children.
The bill is called the Kelly Loving Act, named after a 40-year-old transgender man killed in the Club Q mass shooting in 2022.
Its text states that “deadnaming, misgendering or threatening to publish material related to an individual’s gender-affirming health-care services” will be deemed “coercive control” and will influence the court “when making child custody decisions and determining the best interests of a child for purposes of parenting time.”
If a child’s parents are split between Colorado and another state, the bill adds that Colorado courts shall not enforce the other state’s laws if they attempt to take the child away from the parent who is providing the child with “gender-affirming care.”
In short, if parents call their child by the wrong name or fail to use their preferred pronouns, they could be liable to lose custody.
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How has similar legislation played out elsewhere
Canada pioneered this type of legislation before the U.S., and one notable case resulted in a father’s six-month prison sentence and a $30,000 fine for misgendering his teenage daughter, as reported by the National Post.
The man, who chose to remain anonymous, discussed his situation with political podcaster Matt Walsh in 2022.
“It’s considered criminal violence to not use the preferred pronouns,” the man explained. “It’s no different, let’s say, than if I were to take a broomstick and whack one of my kids over the head. So they were treating it in a similar fashion that misgendering, mispronouning my child was the equivalent of family violence.”
More recently in 2024, California passed Assembly Bill 1955, prohibiting school districts from adopting policies that require teachers or administrators to tell anyone, including parents, when a student changes their gender identity.
The president of the California Family Council, Jonathan Keller, called the new law “a direct assault on the safety of children and the rights of their parents.”
“By allowing schools to withhold vital information from mothers and fathers, this bill undermines their fundamental role and places boys and girls in potential jeopardy,” he stated.
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Where is the CO bill in the legislative process?
On April 2, Colorado’s Kelly Loving Act passed out of the state’s House Judiciary Committee, with the vote falling along party lines, 7-4. On Sunday, the bill passed in the state House and is headed to the Colorado Senate.
Currently, Democrats hold a 23-12 majority, and if it clears it will move to be signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis.
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Colin Wright, the academic adviser for the Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine, believes Polis is likely to sign the legislation into law based on previous bills he’s pushed through.
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In 2019, Polis signed HB19-1039, which simplified the process to update the gender marker on birth certificates without requiring surgical transition, a court order or a doctor’s note.
The same year, Polis also signed HB19-1129, which prohibited state-licensed mental health care providers from engaging in conversion therapy practices with minors. Conversion therapy aims to change a person’s orientation or gender identity from gay or transgender to straight or cisgender.
The British Department of Equality, Rights and Citizenship defined conversion therapy as “any efforts to change, modify or suppress a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity regardless of whether it takes place in a health care, religious or other setting.”
