Colorado Legislature Passes Significant Changes To Workplace Harassment Laws

The Colorado Legislature has passed the Protecting Opportunities and Workers' Rights Act, Senate Bill 23-172 (POWR). Governor Jared Polis is expected to sign it. POWR makes significant changes to the law of workplace harassment and discrimination.

Proponents of POWR tried to pass similar bills in the last several legislative sessions. Despite the Democrats having a majority of both houses and a Democratic Governor, those efforts have failed, until now.

The original bill as introduced, like the versions introduced in previous sessions, was much different and included many provisions that would have been extremely onerous on employers, including the following:

• An employer would not have been able to assert a defense that an employee failed to avail themselvesof a policy prohibiting harassment unless it could show that it had an anti-harassment policy which has had "documented success" and that no employee had made a complaint of retaliation or harassment