Ban on gender-affirming surgery for minors makes Colorado ballot

A proposal to ban gender-affirming surgery for minors in Colorado will head to the November ballot, the Secretary of State’s Office announced Tuesday.

Protect Kids Colorado, the advocacy group backing the initiative, submitted nearly 165,000 signatures to qualify the measure for the ballot. The measure needed about 125,000 to qualify. It is the third of three measures backed by the advocacy group and the second specifically concerning transgender people.

The measure would ban health care professionals from knowingly performing, prescribing or providing surgery to minors “for the purpose of altering biological sex characteristics.” Those types of surgeries have been extremely low, despite the attention they receive.

In 2019, there were 2.1 reported gender-affirming surgeries per 100,000 children aged 15-17 across the country, according to a 2024 study published by the American Medical Association. There were nearly zero such surgeries performed on children aged 13 and 14, and zero performed on children 12 and younger.

Protect Kids Colorado has also won a spot on the ballot for an initiative to ban transgender youth and adults from competing on interscholastic or intramural sports teams that don’t align with their sex assigned at birth, and an initiative to require life sentences for people convicted of child sex trafficking.

Each measure would need a simple majority of support from voters to become law in 2027.

Erin Lee, executive director of Protect Kids Colorado, has previously praised volunteers for gathering the signatures.

“Protecting children is not a partisan issue; it’s a moral one,” she said when the proposal about trans athletes qualified for the ballot.

The measures have also drawn immediate opposition from LGBTQ+ rights organizations and supporters. Opponents of the measure have formed Families Not Politics to oppose the measures.

“Now that these measures have qualified for the ballot, voters should know what’s at stake,” Nadine Bridges, executive director of One Colorado, said in a statement issued by the opposition committee. “Coloradans have always valued individual freedom and the rights of families to make private decisions without political interference, but these measures would go against those core values. ”

Stay up-to-date with Colorado Politics by signing up for our weekly newsletter, The Spot.