All regulations
Colorado, USAEffective January 2027

Colorado SB 26-189

Colorado Senate Bill 26-189, on automated decision-making technology

Colorado rewrote its AI law before the original ever took effect. SB 26-189 repealed and replaced the 2024 Colorado AI Act. Gone are the high-risk classification, the required risk management programme, the yearly impact assessment and the duty of care. What is left is a transparency law. Tell people when software plays a real part in a decision that affects them. Explain a negative outcome within 30 days. And offer a human review that means something.

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At a glance

Covered technology

ADMT materially influencing a consequential decision

Core duties

Notice, adverse-outcome explanation, human review

Explanation window

30 days from an adverse decision

Materiality test

Output is a non-de-minimis factor in the outcome

Enforcement

Colorado Attorney General, with rulemaking due by the effective date

Watch item

Subject to ongoing federal litigation (xAI LLC v. Weiser)

Who has to comply

  • Deployers using ADMT that materially influences employment decisions in Colorado
  • Deployers in housing, lending, education, healthcare, insurance and essential government services
  • Vendors whose technology their customers deploy in those decisions

What the audit covers

  • Whether a system's output is a non-de-minimis factor, which decides if it is in scope at all
  • Outcome differences across demographic groups, as the evidence behind an explanation
  • What drove an individual adverse decision, in terms a consumer can act on
  • Records supporting notice, explanation and human review in practice

What non-compliance costs

Enforced by the Colorado Attorney General. They have to set rules on what adverse-outcome notices say and how they look, in time for the effective date. Enforcement will not start before that work finishes. A federal court has also stayed enforcement in xAI LLC v. Weiser.

Colorado SB 26-189 questions

No. SB 26-189 does not mandate an audit or an impact assessment; the 2024 law that did was repealed before taking effect. The duties are notice, explanation and human review. Testing matters here because you cannot explain an adverse outcome you have never measured, and because federal disparate impact law applies to the same decisions regardless.
SB 24-205 was signed in May 2024. A special-session bill pushed it back to June 2026. Then SB 26-189 repealed and replaced it in May 2026, before it ever took effect. The high-risk classification, risk management programmes, annual impact assessments and duty of care are gone. Guidance written against the 2024 text does not describe the operative law.
The output has to be a non-de-minimis factor in the outcome, for example by constraining, ranking, scoring, recommending or classifying. Incidental, trivial and clerical uses fall outside. This is narrower than the repealed law's substantial factor standard.
Decisions affecting education, employment, housing, financial and lending services, healthcare, insurance and essential government services and public benefits. Legal services appeared in the repealed 2024 law and is no longer on the list.
The testing overlaps, though the duties do not. Local Law 144 wants published selection rates and impact ratios; Colorado wants an explanation an individual can understand and a human who can review it. One round of analysis can feed both, with different reporting on top.

Other regulations we audit against

NYC Local Law 144

New York City, USA

The first law anywhere to require an independent bias audit before an automated hiring tool can be used.

Illinois HB 3773

Illinois, USA

Makes discriminatory AI in employment decisions a civil rights violation, and bans zip code as a proxy for protected class.

California FEHA AI rules

California, USA

Brings automated-decision systems inside the Fair Employment and Housing Act, with four-year records and testing that cuts both ways.

Get audited against Colorado SB 26-189

One engagement can cover this and every other jurisdiction you operate in.

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Colorado SB 26-189 bias audit | VerifyWise