Colorado legislature declines to override Jared Polis’ veto of social media bill after House caves
The override effort failed when the House of Representatives laid over the motion to override the veto until May 9, which is after the legislative session ends
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The Colorado legislature Monday declined to override Jared Polis’ veto of a bipartisan bill aimed at protecting children from the harms of social media, sparing the governor the embarrassment of the state’s first veto override in 14 years.
The override effort failed when the state House caved by laying over the vote to override the veto until May 9, which is after the legislative session ends. That prevented representatives from having to vote against the override after backing the bill.
“The votes are not here,” said Rep. Andy Boesenecker, a Fort Collins Democrat and one of the lead sponsors of the bill. “That’s a fact.”
The Senate voted 29-6 on Friday to override the veto. Backers of the Senate Bill 86 needed the support of two-thirds of each the House and Senate to overcome Polis’ rejection of the legislation.
☀️ EARLIER
Colorado Senate overrides Jared Polis’ veto of bill regulating social media in extremely rare rebuke of governor
The veto override vote now heads to the House. The last veto overrides in Colorado were in 2011 and 2007 under former Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter, and both dealt with budget spending requests. Read more
The bill originally passed the Senate by a 29-6 vote and the House by a 46-18 margin.
The vote to lay over the veto override in the House passed 51-13.
The failure of the override, which threatened to emphasize the broader policy differences between the Democratic majority in the General Assembly and the governor, allowed Polis to save face. The two sides frequently clash on legislation, including measures on labor matters and climate change, but rarely so publicly.
But the close call serves as a warning sign for Polis in his last year and a half as governor that the legislature, particularly its Democratic majority, is increasingly unwilling to yield to the heavy hand he wields in policy discussions.
The legislature is also considering whether to override the governor’s veto of a second bill, this one dealing with public records, before it closes shop for the year May 7.
The last veto overrides in Colorado were in 2011 and 2007 under former Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter, and both dealt with budget spending requests. It has been decades since the Colorado legislature overrode a gubernatorial veto of a non-budget measure.
One of the reasons veto overrides are so unusual in Colorado is that the legislature can time when it sends bills to the governor. If the General Assembly isn’t in session when a veto happens, then it can’t override a veto.
Legislative leadership is responsible for deciding when to send a bill to the governor. Polis generally has 10 days from receiving a bill, when the legislature is in session, to sign it, veto it or let it become law without his signature.
State Sen. Lindsey Daugherty, an Arvada Democrat, blamed House Democratic leadership for the override failure.
“We had the votes to pass Senate Bill 86 on Friday, but leadership in the House wouldn’t put it on the calendar,” she told The Colorado Sun.
Senate Bill 86 would have required that social media sites operating in Colorado, like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, investigate, suspend users if there is evidence and then take down accounts that are determined to be selling guns or drugs, or if the accounts were engaged in the sex trafficking or sexual exploitation of minors. Sites would also have been required to set up hotlines for communicating with law enforcement and respond to police requests for assistance within 72 hours.
The 23-page measure would have also forced social media companies to provide Colorado with reports on how many kids use their platforms, including how often and for how long, and how much children interact with user content that violates the companies’ policies.
“Make no mistake, I share the concerns of parents and law enforcement across our state about minors and adults exposed to illegal activity on social media platforms as well as in neighborhoods,” Polis wrote in a letter explaining his decision to veto the bill. “This is why my office offered suggestions focused on strengthening tools to help law enforcement successfully apprehend criminals. Sadly, the bill sponsors rejected these ideas and passed legislation that, to my mind, unduly infringes on the speech, privacy, and liberty rights of all users.”
The governor said the legislation “erodes privacy, freedom and innovation; hurts vulnerable people; and potentially subjects all Coloradans to stifling and unwarranted scrutiny of our constitutionally protected speech.” He cited examples of people suffering mental health crises being removed from sites.
Polis also said he dislikes how the measure mandates that private companies investigate and impose the government’s chosen penalty of permanently removing a user — known as deplatforming — “even if the underlying complaint is malicious and unwarranted.”
“In our judicial proceedings, people receive due process when they are suspected of breaking the law,” he wrote. “This bill, however, conscripts social media platforms to be judge and jury when users may have broken the law or even a company’s own content rules.”
Groups that asked Polis to veto Senate Bill 86 included the Working Families Party, ProgressNow Colorado, TikTok and Rocky Mountain Gun Owners.
While the bill takes effect in August, most of its provisions don’t go into effect until next year.
In support of the override were Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and the Colorado District Attorneys’ Council.
Boesenecker, one of the lawmakers who sponsored the bill, vowed to bring the policy back in the future.
This is a developing story that will be updated.
