Colorado voters can protect kids three ways this fall. Protect Kids Colorado put three citizen initiatives on the November 3, 2026 ballot, and all three qualified. Ballots are going out by mail to voters across Colorado October 2–9, so people are voting right now.
Each measure changes state statute and needs only a simple majority to pass. All three take effect January 1, 2027 if voters approve them.
Proposition 133: Penalties for Human Trafficking of a Minor (formerly Initiative #108). Its short title is the Children Are Not For Sale Act. Right now, child sex trafficking in Colorado is a class 2 felony: 8 to 48 years in prison, plus five years of parole. Proposition 133 makes it a class 1 felony with a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole. It also makes buyers guilty of the same crime: anyone who knowingly trades anything of value to buy or sell sex with a minor. The governor keeps the power to pardon or commute.
Proposition 134: Male and Female Participation in School and Collegiate Sports (formerly #109). Its short title is the Protect Women and Girls Sports Act. Every school team, from elementary school through college, including intramurals, must be designated male, female, or coed. Female teams are for females. A girl can still play on a boys’ team when there is no girls’ team. It also bars any government body, accreditor, or athletic association from investigating or punishing a school for keeping a girls’ team for girls. The measure defines sex by biology: males produce sperm, females produce eggs.
This is not hypothetical in Colorado. The state’s high school athletic association has let boys who identify as girls play on girls’ teams. At least seven Colorado schools and districts have already adopted their own policies keeping males out of female sports. A new Protect Kids Colorado ad, announced October 7, lets Colorado girls tell it themselves. One faced a male opponent at a high school regional volleyball tournament. Others played against a boy on the soccer field or had to wrestle one.
Proposition 135: Prohibit Surgery on Minors in Response to Perception of Sex or Gender (formerly #110). Its short title is the Protect Children From Irreversible Sex Change Surgery Act. No health-care professional may knowingly perform surgery on anyone under 18 to alter their sex characteristics, and no state or federal money, Medicaid, or insurance may pay for it. Male circumcision is exempt, and so is treatment for verifiable disorders of sex development and acquired physical or chemical abnormalities. Protect Kids Colorado turned in 164,922 signatures, and the Secretary of State certified the measure for the ballot on March 17, 2026.
Opponents have claimed Proposition 135 could block cancer surgery for teens. A Rocky Mountain Voice fact-check found the text says no such thing. Cancer is an acquired abnormality, which the measure exempts, and the claim later disappeared from the opposition campaign’s website. The same fact-check found that Proposition 134 contains no “gender checks.”
If 135 passes, Colorado would become the 28th state to ban sex-rejecting surgeries on minors. It would also come just months after the Colorado Supreme Court ordered Children’s Hospital Colorado, in May, to restore puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors while the case goes to trial. Colorado voters can now draw a line of their own: no child is for sale, girls’ sports are for girls, and no child should lose healthy body parts to an ideology.
Read the measures yourself on the Protect Kids Colorado website and the Colorado Secretary of State’s 2026 ballot page.
Sources
- Colorado Secretary of State — Amendments and Propositions on the 2026 Ballot
- Colorado Secretary of State — Initiative #110 qualifies (March 17, 2026)
- Colorado Legislative Council — 2026 Ballot Information Booklet (measure text, pp. 52–61, 92–94)
- Protect Kids Colorado
- Protect Kids Colorado — Prop 134 ad on YouTube · announcement (October 7, 2026)
- Rocky Mountain Voice — Proposition 134 and 135 fact check (October 1, 2026)
Related: Colorado Supreme Court orders Children’s Hospital Colorado to restore youth blockers and hormones
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