Coloradans fought for press freedom and freedom of information in 2025 in settings as small as the Eastern Plains town of Bennett and as big as the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
A Larimer County District Court judge will decide whether the Colorado Open Records Act requires a public hospital district to redact privileged information from attorney billing invoices and release the public portions to the Estes Valley Voice news site.
A Weld County Sheriff’s Office requirement that records request forms be notarized “creates an arbitrary and unreasonable hurdle” and “does not serve any legitimate government interest,” a letter from an attorney for two news organizations says.
The cost to obtain administrative records of the state’s judicial branch will increase if the Colorado Supreme Court accepts the recommendations of its Public Access Committee.
The Colorado Court of Appeals will decide whether a judge properly ordered the state public defender to pay prison inmate Eric St. George $13,650 for its “arbitrary and capricious” denial of his request for a policy document.
The Estes Valley Voice had been in existence for just four months when it filed its first open-government lawsuit. Now 14 months since it launched in June 2024, the digital news outlet has filed — remarkably — a total of three.
Colorado’s Law Enforcement Integrity Act does not permit agencies to charge requesters hundreds or thousands of dollars for body-worn camera footage showing possible misconduct by police officers, three briefs submitted to the Colorado of Appeals argue.
Lawmakers made another unsuccessful attempt to weaken the Colorado Open Records Act during the 2025 state legislative session.
Gov. Jared Polis’ veto of a bill to extend Colorado Open Records Act response deadlines for requests made by the public and businesses will stand after legislators abandoned their effort to override it.
Writing that “all legitimate requests for public transparency” under the Colorado Open Records Act “should be treated equally under the law,” Gov. Jared Polis on Thursday vetoed a bill that gave government entities more time to respond to requests made by the public and businesses but kept deadlines the same for journalists.
