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.
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.
State lawmakers want to adjust a 2023 juvenile privacy law that recently forced Colorado’s judicial branch to restrict attorneys’ access to criminal court records, also creating delays in processing document requests from journalists and the public.
There will be no “presumptive” livestreaming of criminal trials and evidentiary hearings in state courts, but judges may allow those proceedings to be broadcast on Webex or another videoconferencing platform after considering several factors, a directive issued by Colorado Supreme Court Chief Justice Brian Boatright says.
A bill requiring Colorado courts to livestream open criminal court proceedings on Webex or another videoconferencing platform won unanimous approval in the House Judiciary Committee.
The open-records modernization bill survived the Senate Appropriations Committee, but lawmakers retained amendments that could let governments withhold some records now available for public inspection.
