Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed Senate Bill 26-189 on 14 May 2026. The Senate passed the bill 34-1 and the House passed it 57-6 during the 2026 legislative session. The act repeals Senate Bill 24-205 in full. The new statute reaches automated decision-making technology used in consequential decisions and takes effect on 1 January 2027.
SB 26-189 defines automated decision-making technology as ADMT. ADMT processes personal data and uses computation. It produces predictions, recommendations, classifications, rankings, scores, or other outputs that make, guide, or assist a decision. Developers must publish technical documentation. The documentation lists intended uses, categories of training data, known limitations, and instructions for human review. Deployers must give clear and conspicuous notice to consumers at the point of interaction with covered ADMT. Consumers may request meaningful human review of an adverse consequential decision. Both sides must retain compliance records for at least three years.
The repeal lifts the prior duty of care, the risk management program requirement, and the impact assessment regime that Senate Bill 24-205 had created. Employers, lenders, insurers, housing providers, healthcare providers, education institutions, and government deployers escape those programs. They still owe consumers a disclosure when ADMT informs a hiring, lending, insurance, housing, education, or essential service decision. Vendors selling AI tools into Colorado must hand deployers the technical documentation needed for the deployer side notices.
The Colorado Attorney General enforces SB 26-189 through the Colorado Consumer Protection Act. Violations count as deceptive trade practices. The statute carries no private right of action. Deployers gain a delayed compliance date of 1 January 2027, which pushes the effective date back from the prior June 2026 trigger. The act exempts smaller deployers below set thresholds and preserves general anti-discrimination statutes that already reach algorithmic harms.
Licentium advises on AI act compliance for vendors and deployers, and works with a partner network where local Colorado counsel is required. We help crypto, AI, and digital asset businesses on disclosure design, model documentation, and consumer notice flows. Work we undertake includes AI governance reviews, AI policy drafting, vendor diligence on automated decision systems, regulator engagement, and incident response planning. Contact us to discuss SB 26-189 readiness for your Colorado operations.
Source: Colorado General Assembly, Senate Bill 26-189, Automated Decision-Making Technology, signed 14 May 2026, https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb26-189
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