The Problems with House Bill 25-1158, Digital Education Materials
Nine Reasons Why Coloradans Should Oppose HB25-1158
No matter what their political party is.
If you’re not familiar with the bill, you can read the summary and full text here on the CO Legislators’ page here.
At first glance, we thought it looked okay. (Who doesn’t want to protect kids from predators and excessive marketing?) Someone in our network encouraged us to dive a little deeper. By the end of the day, we had concerns. Serious concerns. Here are 9 Reasons to Oppose Bill 1158.
Despite some good intentions, the bill causes more problems than it solves.
People for and against the bill agree on so many things: Internet safety is important. Kids need to be protected from nefarious actors and predators. Companies exploiting kids to make a profit should be held accountable. P-rnography shouldn’t be in schools (though legal and religious definitions often are not the same.) Parents have the right and responsibility to protect their children, as do schools and publishers. A serious problem requires an effective solution. This bill isn’t it.
The sponsors did not explain how pervasive the problem they claim the bill addresses is nor have they supplied credible, expert-backed explanations for why it happens.
The sponsors’ introduction of the bill in the House Education Committee on February 20 included one of the sponsors talking about incidents involving her children. Reportedly all three children accessed harmful content while doing schoolwork. Of course, most parents and educators want to protect kids from harmful content. No one explained if and how there was any follow-up to troubleshoot the root of the problems that one of the sponsors shared was their personal experience. Is it possible it was the publishers’ fault? Absolutely! It’s also possible something else was going on due to ineffective Internet safety protocols at school, at home, in public places, or even on the devices themselves.
There’s no evidence that the sponsors got input from a cross-section of stakeholders, at least not that anyone in our network has found.
Schools and public libraries already follow internet safety protocols established by local school boards under Colorado’s strong local control laws. If a bill like this is necessary, it should involve experts in internet safety, career and technical education (CTE), and school-business partnerships to ensure a balanced approach.
During their introduction of the bill to the House Education Committee on 02/20/2025, the Sponsors were asked about Stakeholders who could explain how the bill solves problems with links. One Sponsor said it would be addressed in public comments, but it wasn’t according to network members who followed the discussion closely.
The Daily Camera reported that Rep. Joseph didn’t consult with her local school district, BVSD, which eventually came out as the first school district to oppose the bill.
It leaves the term “harmful links” open to interpretation - and exploitation.
The bill does not define “harmful links,” who determines what is harmful, nor what standards will be used to evaluate links. This opens up public education to more chaos and attacks. Book bans were coordinated by Christian Nationalist political and religious extremists and anti-government organizations and this bill appears to open up those attack tactics for digital resources. Would rural agriculture partnerships and curriculum be at risk because their programs about animal husbandry use some of the same terminology that some parent groups oppose when it comes to human biology and sexuality? Could this term be weaponized to pressure schools into removing any content not aligned with ultra-conservative nonprofits like Prager U or Hillsdale Bible College? Who decides what constitutes a “promotion” or an “advertisement”? Would nonprofit resources or business partnerships for career training be unfairly targeted?
The bill’s language is similar to censorship and hidden agendas rhetoric by political, religious, and anti-government extremists seen around the state and country.
Extremist hate groups like Moms for Liberty and Colorado Parent Action Network falsely market this bill as protection against pornography, drugs, and vaping—issues the bill does not explicitly address. This raises concerns: Is this bill a Trojan Horse for censorship, advancing ideological and religious viewpoints under the guise of education policy? Notably, HB25-1158 mirrors Tennessee’s SB2292, a law explicitly citing obscenity and pornography. Those terms are absent from HB25-1158 but are misleadingly invoked by its supporters. Will links to Native American tribes be forbidden if they have a connection to an organization someone determines is unacceptable? Colorado’s population includes many Native people. There’s even a charter school connected to the Ute Tribe in Southern Colorado.
As proposed, the bill blocks kids from developing crucial skills, such as literacy, critical thinking, and solid academic research skills.
It significantly hinders students' access to essential digital resources necessary for developing information literacy and conducting academic research. Digital archives and news sources play a crucial role in helping students learn to craft research papers, evaluate sources, and build arguments grounded in evidence. Many well-regarded academic and journalistic outlets incorporate hyperlinks, ads, and sponsored content as common digital components that offer important context and avenues for deeper investigation. Eliminating these features would strip away essential educational materials, severely hindering students' capacity to cultivate critical thinking and media literacy. This proposed legislation could pave the way for organized efforts by political and religious groups to restrict students' access to publicly available information, and more importantly, stunt this generation’s ability to evaluate information. Learn more about what the Colorado Association of Libraries says about this and other bills.
The bill has ties to extremist groups that promote exclusion, discrimination, and the rights of some parents over the rights of all other parents.
Many people driving and supporting this bill have publicly attacked people and groups who don’t share their beliefs. Parents, educators, community members, lawmakers, and even students have been on the receiving end of the attacks. This has been extensively documented by “citizen journalists” on sites like the Thompson Reform Watch Facebook page and by state and local media.
The bill threatens career & technical (CTE) programs, rural industry programs, community schools, and any programs leveraging relationships with industry partners.
Career & Technical K-12 industry partners, including for-profit businesses, collaborate with districts and schools to prepare students for fulfilling lives with jobs that contribute to society and the economy. It’s not a stretch to assume there are research and curriculum links someone would conclude are commercial, promotion, or advertising. Some examples are agriculture & biology programs in the many rural areas around Colorado, space & cyber industry in Boulder & Co. Springs, biotech industry partners in Northern Colorado, recreation and tourism partnerships in mountain communities, & skilled trades partners all over the state.
It imposes impractical and unrealistic compliance requirements across the system.
Think about all the compliance demands this would place on schools, districts, teachers, librarians, digital content providers, publishers, and research database providers. The legislation requires digital resource providers to remove designated content within three days or risk having their contracts revoked. Embedded links and advertisements are essential components of numerous academic and research platforms. Enforcing this rule would cause unwarranted disruptions and discourage credible vendors from partnering with public schools. The requirement is so impractical that adhering to it would be nearly impossible, yet the system itself would get so bogged down that even more resources would be stolen from children.
