Colorado Red Flag Expansion Bill Heads to Governor, Allows Schools to Initiate Firearm Seizures

Colorado’s red flag law is expanding…again. 

SB26-004 has passed the legislature and is now sitting on Governor Polis’ desk. He can sign it, veto it, or do nothing. If he does nothing, it becomes law automatically in ten days.

Although this bill is being sold as a simple change to current law, that is a lie, as the change will be significant in practice.

What The Expansion Does

Colorado’s Red Flag ERPO system was originally sold as a narrow tool. In 2019, it was limited to law enforcement, family members, or domestic/household partners. They claimed it would allow people closest to an individual, those with direct personal knowledge, to intervene in extreme situations.

That didn’t last.

In 2023, lawmakers expanded the list to include a much wider range of professionals: district attorneys, educators, and medical and mental health providers. That alone marked a shift away from “close relationship” toward “professional observation.” But it still required a specific person to have first hand knowledge – and the liability of false claims.

SB26-004 takes the next step.

It doesn’t just add more people. It adds institutions.

Under this bill, entire systems can now initiate red flag petitions, including: k-12 schools, colleges and universities, hospitals, and behavioral health facilities. Not just individuals within those systems, but the institutions themselves.

It is a fundamental structural change. Once you move from individuals to institutions, you are no longer dealing with personal judgment alone. You are dealing with policies, liability concerns, internal reporting chains, and risk management protocols.

And institutional systems are designed to avoid risk, not absorb it.

The Already Troublesome Red Flag Process

The underlying red flag process itself doesn’t change and that makes this expansion matter even more.

A Red Flag ERPO is still a civil order. It can still be issued before a crime has been committed, or before any evidence of a crime exists. It still only requires a preponderance of evidence, the lowest evidentiary threshold in law, to confiscate someone’s firearms. It still operates in an ex parte fashion, allowing court proceedings to take place – and guns to be removed – before the person being red flagged is even aware any of this is happening. And it still allows firearms to be removed for up to a year.

Clearly that framework is already very controversial. Then SB26-004 allows for that process to begin inside a school administration building, or a hospital system.

Think about what that means in practice… People will be flagged based on incomplete information, misunderstandings, or bias. Because once you expand the number of pathways into the system, you expand the number of ways it can go wrong.

We are living in a time where speech, behavior, and disagreement are increasingly framed through the lens of risk. Where parents are called domestic terrorists for speaking up at school board meetings, and where politics has infiltrated classrooms and medicine. And people are reported, flagged, and escalated through systems that are designed to err on the side of caution. 

And SB26-004 plugs that system directly into institutional networks, removing humans and relying on algorithms and protocols.

And the person at the center of it is likely unaware any of it is happening until the red flag order has been granted.

Now it’s up to Governor Polis.

Sign it, veto it, or let it become law on it’s own.

Send Governor Polis an email or call his office and ask he veto SB26-004 and protect due process.