It turns out even Colorado’s ruling Democrats occasionally can tell when they’ve gone too far — if only because the U.S. Supreme Court is waiting in the wings. 

This month, Gov. Jared Polis signed House Bill 26-1276 into law, with a little-noticed provision quietly reversing one of the state’s most brazen attacks on federal immigration law — and on free speech. 

HB 1276 explicitly exempts the state’s e-filing system — used by lawyers to upload their court documents — from a controversial requirement imposed only a year earlier. It had forced private attorneys to pledge, “under penalty of perjury,” not to help federal immigration authorities obtain certain identifying information absent a court order. 

The retreat was a surprise, to be sure, but a necessary one. 

Last August, Colorado blindsided attorneys trying to access Colorado’s online court filing system. Without warning, a popup “Disclaimer User Agreement” demanded lawyers agree to the certification. Attorneys could only accept or decline, and the response was recorded.  

“I had a filing and literally couldn’t do it until I accepted,” said attorney Suzanne Taheri, who served as Colorado’s deputy secretary of state from 2012 through 2018. “I tried to decline, and it sent me back to the login.” 

The outcry was swift. District attorneys Michael Allen, now running for attorney general, and George Brauchler pushed back. 

“Perjury is about attesting to facts, not a pledge regarding future conduct,” Brauchler posted. “Good luck proving perjury here. Did lawyers actually draft this?” 

I first reported on the requirement a few days later, after the certification had been relabeled an “announcement.” 

The pushback prompted an extended pause, though it turned out that government attorneys, including DAs and their staffs, were exempt all along. 

When the requirement resurfaced in April, the judicial department said it had paused implementation in September only for review. “That review is now complete,” officials announced, restoring the verification requirement. 

Stunned, Colorado Springs attorney Ian Speir sounded the alarm on social media, sparking renewed — and national — backlash. 

“As a lawyer, I have ethical duties to my clients, and those override a number of other things,” Speir told me. “I think in this instance my ethical duty to my client overrides a personal objection I may have to this particular certification requirement.” 

He had no choice but to accept the terms, calling it an “unnecessary rule” that was “very clearly directed at co-opting private attorneys across the state and enlisting them in Colorado’s anti-federal sanctuary efforts.” 

“I was surprised by it — so blatantly content- and viewpoint-based from a First Amendment perspective,” Speir said. 

George Washington University law professor and Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley weighed in nationally. 

“In my view, the law is facially unconstitutional and should be struck down,” Turley wrote for FoxNews.com. If not, and the state fought another legal battle, Coloradans would “continue to subsidize this effort to defend laws compelling or censoring speech.” 

“For free speech advocates,” Turley closed, “Colorado has proven positively a godsend in its string of losses in seeking to gut the First Amendment.” 

Colorado has recently lost three speech-related cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including the recent 8-1 ruling in Chiles v. Salazar. Speir told me in April that he was preparing a possible lawsuit. 

Let’s be clear: The requirement was strictly intended to intimidate lawyers and undermine federal immigration enforcement — chilling both speech and federal law enforcement cooperation. Ironically, the requirement never was explicit in last year’s legislation but was a later ad lib by the Judicial Department. 

It all amounted to what Scott Mechowski, a former New York ICE deputy field director, called “obstruction of justice.” Fundamentally, it commandeered private attorneys’ speech in service of a radical sanctuary agenda — inviting a legal challenge. 

With the judicial department pressing ahead and a constitutional challenge looming, lawmakers needed to clean up the mess. 

No wonder Polis and the legislature backed down. 

“The governor made the right decision in repealing this anti-ICE policy,” said John Fabbricatore, former ICE field director for Denver. “By requiring attorneys to pledge, under penalty of perjury, not to assist federal immigration enforcement, the state was taking a politically charged stance and could have committed a crime under federal law. The state’s non-cooperative stance had effectively turned into shielding illegal aliens from detection.”  

The fix appears at the beginning of HB 1276, hiding in plain sight and going largely unnoticed. What followed drew far more attention, thanks to its own egregious overreach. 

The same law authorizes a massive expansion of inspections of immigration detention facilities — including the GEO facility in Aurora — and subjects them to civil penalties. It also requires the state health department to annually report to the attorney general on how facilities are complying with new state requirements. 

Those provisions advance the same sanctuary agenda through different means. 

Let’s be real: Lawmakers didn’t tuck this attorney-certification repeal into a sanctuary bill because they suddenly had a constitutional revelation. They did it because a legal challenge would have succeeded. 

It’s a rare instance of Colorado lawmakers abandoning an indefensible speech restriction before the Supreme Court had the chance to strike it down for them. 

Too bad it won’t become a habit. 

Jimmy Sengenberger is an investigative journalist, public speaker, and longtime local talk-radio host. Reach Jimmy online at Jimmysengenberger.com or on X (formerly Twitter) @SengCenter.