For the first time in modern Colorado history, the state legislature proactively voted to take a right away from a specific group of workers. Yes, a rollback on a right that already existed. The workers are farmworkers. Overwhelmingly Latino. Overwhelmingly immigrant. The bill is Senate Bill 26-121. On April 16, 2026, the Colorado House passed SB26-121 by a vote of 33 to 32, with Speaker Julie McCluskie casting the deciding vote. The Senate had already passed it on March 25 b

Today will go down in history as the day Colorado lawmakers decided that farmworkers should work 56 hours before they earn overtime pay. It is a slap in the face to overworked and already underpaid immigrants who do the backbreaking work this country depends on, work most Americans no longer do. I do not have easy words to describe what many Latinos are feeling tonight. It is grief. It is anger. It is betrayal. People who have never had their community singled out by hostile

For many of us on Colorado’s Western Slope, the struggle for farmworker dignity is deeply personal. My father was a farmworker when he first moved to this country, working as an undocumented laborer in the orchards around Hotchkiss and Delta in the 1970s. He worked in the fields of California as well, where I was born, not very far from the birthplace of America’s farmworkers movement. So when I see Colorado’s state legislature advancing a bill that undermines the dignity of