Colorado’s days of above-average income opportunities for women, minorities, men and members of the LGBTQIA-plus community are quickly coming to an end. It’s all thanks to a legislature that cares more about appearances than outcomes.

If they say it helps women — which they do with Senate Bill 23-105 — don’t believe a word.

As mentioned in this space last week, a study by Colorado’s Commonsense Institute, found Colorado has suffered a substantial drop in companies relocating here in the past two years. The study identified two major factors: the soaring cost of housing and the rising cost of doing business — ramifications of excessive state regulations.

In this overregulated, business-hostile environment, the state legislature wants to make things worse. The Democratic majority — rubberstamped by party worshipping Gov. Jared Polis — wants another law making it easier to sue employers.

Laws that put businesses in constant jeopardy repel employers. That’s why businesses — consider Tesla — flee California for Texas, Florida and other states that welcome good jobs.

Rewind to 2019, when the left-wing legislature passed Senate Bill 19-085 — the “Equal Pay for Equal Work Act.” Signed by Polis, who embraces all far-left extremism, mandates employers to notify all employees of all promotion opportunities. Employers must include pay ranges in job postings. The law eases — in fact, it practically encourages — employee lawsuits for pay discrepancies if merely perceived as a form of gender bias.

Employers maintain proprietary information for good reasons. Most job listings say something like “salary negotiable.” That’s because employers want and need the flexibility to hire the most qualified and provenly effective applicants or to take chances on those with low experience and high potential. That flexibility maximizes opportunities for people who need to find work.

The wage-disclosure rule quells opportunities for exceptional applicants to negotiate exceptional compensation agreements. Success in business involves constant decisions that require maximum on-the-fly flexibility.

After Colorado’s 2019 law kicked in, The Wall Street Journal found national companies excluding Coloradans from applying for remote positions because of the disclosure requirement. Too many ads say, Colorado residents need not apply. That means fewer work opportunities for women and everyone else in the state. Rather than “equal pay,” as the law promises, it means no pay and don’t even ask.

Anyone who pays attention to legislative sausage making knows of politicians who don’t care what a bill might do. They don’t care about unintended consequences, even when explained to them. They care about optics, which are created with feel-good titles such as “Equal Pay for Equal Work.”

Instead of fixing the law and its proven anti-worker consequences, the same sponsors of SB-19-085 — Jesse Danielson, D-Wheatridge and Sen. Janet Buckner, D-Aurora — want Senate Bill 23-105.

“A bill that is supposed to be helping close the gender gap in worker pay could be making it harder for Colorado women to find a job,” said Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, R-Brighton. “Most remote workers are women, so why wouldn’t we want to try to fix this?”

Why? Because the law sounds good. They don’t care what it does.

SB-105 would require — not authorize, but “require” — the Department of Labor and Employment to investigate pay inequities and enforce equal pay mandates. So, if an employee talks to a colleague who makes more money — for a limitless number of reasons — a simple phone call kicks in a state investigation. The inquiry can always find gender as a correlation and conflate it with cause.

If the state finds a discrepancy and declares a gender motive, it can impose six years of back pay on the company. Anyone desperate for money can find a higher-paid colleague and dial up a windfall. If employee A has a higher wage based on results, the state can claim gender bias and cost the employer hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Just like the mandate to post a wage range, this would — absolutely and beyond question — make Colorado even more undesirable as a place to relocate or initiate a business. Even the least sexist employers, even those owned and run by women, will avoid this sword of Damocles.

Optics of this bill will help Danielson, Buckner and supporters. It will create the illusion they care about us all, and that’s good enough for them. When it hurts women, all other Coloradans and the state’s economy, they know few will connect the dots.