Colorado Anti-Doxxing Statute
What it does, who it protects, and how to invoke it. Plain English.
Who it protects
Law enforcement, public health workers, healthcare workers, child protection workers, code enforcement officers, mortgage servicers, educators, school staff, and election officials in Colorado.
What it does
Makes it a Class 1 misdemeanor to knowingly post protected workers' personal information online when the dissemination poses an imminent and serious threat to their safety.
How to invoke it
If your address or other personal info has been posted with apparent intent to threaten you, file a police report citing CRS §§ 18-9-313 / 18-9-313.5. The DA decides whether to prosecute. Under the 2022 expansion, qualifying workers can also attest to imminent threat to have their name and address withheld from public records.
Enforcement reality
First conviction landed April 2026: People v. Benson, Denver. Activist Regan Benson read a Denver police commander's home address aloud on a livestream and suggested followers hold a 'pig roast' there. Denver jury rejected the unconstitutionality defense. Appeal expected on First Amendment grounds. Statute operates against the backdrop of Counterman v. Colorado (SCOTUS 2023), which requires a subjective mental-state standard for true-threats prosecutions of online speech.
What the statute actually does
Colorado's anti-doxxing statute lives at CRS §§ 18-9-313 and 18-9-313.5. If someone posts your home address, phone number, or other personal information online, and the post poses an imminent and serious threat to your safety, that's a Class 1 misdemeanor. Up to 364 days in jail, up to a $1,000 fine.
The original 2021 bill (HB 21-1030) covered public health workers and law enforcement officers. Penalty was steeper then, up to 18 months and $5,000. The 2022 expansion (HB 22-1041) added healthcare workers, child protection workers, code enforcement officers, and mortgage servicers. A separate 2022 educators bill, signed May 26, added teachers and school staff. The penalty dropped to the current Class 1 misdemeanor structure during reconciliation.
This is the strongest statutory tool for first responders living in Colorado today.
Who's covered
The current enumerated list:
- Law enforcement officers
- Public health workers
- Healthcare workers
- Child protection workers
- Code enforcement officers
- Mortgage servicers
- Educators and school staff
- Election officials
If you're on the job in any of those categories, the statute reaches the human actor who posts your information. It does not reach the broker page that already lists your address. Different layer.
The Benson conviction
April 2026: a Denver jury convicted Regan Benson, a 53-year-old police-reform activist with about 24,000 YouTube followers, under CRS § 18-9-313. The first reported conviction under the statute.
The facts laid out at trial. In September 2023, Benson livestreamed from inside a Denver Police Department station and confronted a commander on camera. She asked her viewers to find his home address. They did. She read it aloud on the livestream and suggested followers hold a "pig roast" at his home. The commander testified at trial about the safety impact on his family. DPD initiated a safety plan that included increased patrols and a security camera at the home.
Defense argued the statute was unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds. The Denver jury rejected that argument. Appeal is expected. Coverage: Police1 (Apr 3, 2026), Denver7 (Apr 4, 2026), CBS Colorado.
The constitutional backdrop
Two cases shape how this statute will fare on appeal.
Counterman v. Colorado, 600 U.S. 66 (2023). The Supreme Court held that true-threats prosecutions of online speech require a subjective mental-state showing. The state has to prove the speaker had at least a reckless disregard for the threatening nature of the statement. That raises the bar for any prosecution that turns on what the poster meant.
The Colorado Supreme Court struck down portions of the state harassment statute on First Amendment grounds in March 2022. Colorado courts have shown they will scrutinize speech-based criminal statutes hard.
A March 2025 Vermont legislative memo flagged a separate concern: class-based doxxing statutes that protect only specific occupations may face equal protection challenges. The Colorado statute is class-based by design.
None of this guarantees the Benson conviction holds on appeal. None of it means the statute is dead. It means the appellate posture is real, and prosecutors will pick their next case carefully.
Enforcement reality
Two layers, two tools.
NJ's Daniel's Law gets the broker layer, the people-search pages that resell your address from public records to anyone with a credit card. Civil remedy. Statutory damages. The brokers comply because the math works against them.
CO's anti-doxxing statute gets the human-actor layer, the person who posts your address with intent to threaten. Criminal remedy. Misdemeanor. The DA has to decide to prosecute, and the case has to clear the Counterman bar.
If you're on the job in Colorado, both layers matter. The statute gives you a path against the doxxer. It doesn't reach the data that made the dox possible. That part runs through opt-out work across every commercial site that lists your residence by name. When the statute can't reach a broker directly, continuous broker-side address scrubbing for Colorado officers runs the removal anyway.
For the related case file, see /incidents/denver-police-commander-doxxing-2024. For the Colorado state-level overview, see /states/colorado.