Colorado

Overview

Colorado, the Centennial State, is a constituent state of the United States, classified as one of the Mountain states although only about half of its area lies in the Rocky Mountains (Encyclopaedia Britannica). It was admitted to the union on August 1, 1876, as the 38th state, and its capital is Denver (Encyclopaedia Britannica). Its area is 104,094 square miles, its 2020 population was 5,773,714, and its 2024 estimate is 5,957,493 (Encyclopaedia Britannica). It borders Wyoming and Nebraska to the north, Nebraska and Kansas to the east, Oklahoma and New Mexico to the south, Arizona to the southwest, and Utah to the west (Encyclopaedia Britannica).

Colorado’s natural landscape ranges from the flat grass-covered eastern plains of the High Plains, through the rolling Colorado Piedmont paralleling the Rocky Mountain front, to the high mountain ranges and plateaus in the west that make up the southern Rocky Mountains and the Colorado Plateau (Encyclopaedia Britannica). The state rises from about 3,350 feet in elevation in the east to more than 14,000 feet in the Rockies (Encyclopaedia Britannica). The Colorado Piedmont, about 50 miles wide and 275 miles long, encompasses all the state’s large urban complexes, its major transport arteries, most of its industry, most of its major colleges and universities, and four-fifths of its people (Encyclopaedia Britannica).

Measure	Figure	Source
Area	104,094 sq mi (269,603 sq km)	Encyclopaedia Britannica
Population, 2020 / 2024 est.	5,773,714 / 5,957,493	Encyclopaedia Britannica
Highest point	Mount Elbert, 14,440 ft	Encyclopaedia Britannica
Peaks above 14,000 ft	53	Encyclopaedia Britannica

Mountains, parks, and the Mile High City

The western half of Colorado includes the huge mountain upthrust of the southern Rocky Mountains and the Colorado Plateau, where mesas and mountain ranges alternate with broad valleys and deep narrow canyons (Encyclopaedia Britannica). With its copious precipitation, that mountain land provides water for six states and Mexico, principally via the Colorado River, which rises in the northern mountains and flows south and then west through the state until it enters eastern Utah (Encyclopaedia Britannica). The drainage pattern is oriented by the mountains themselves, which form the Continental Divide (Encyclopaedia Britannica). The Sawatch, Colorado’s highest range, consists of Mount Elbert at 14,440 feet, the highest point in the state, and many other elevations above 14,000 feet; the Colorado Rockies contain some 53 peaks above 14,000 feet and 831 peaks between 11,000 and 14,000 feet (Encyclopaedia Britannica).

Colorado’s protected landscape is the other half of its identity. Rocky Mountain National Park, established in 1915 in the western part of the Front Range, is a popular destination for tourists and outdoors enthusiasts (Encyclopaedia Britannica). Mesa Verde National Park, designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1978, preserves the remnants of cliff-dwelling Native American settlements (Encyclopaedia Britannica). The state has four national parks in total — Rocky Mountain, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Great Sand Dunes, and Mesa Verde — and its outdoor menu runs to skiing, hiking, snowshoeing, rock climbing, and white-water rafting (Encyclopaedia Britannica). Denver, the capital, sits where Cherry Creek meets the South Platte River at the western edge of the Great Plains, just east of the Front Range, and its elevation at the State Capitol is 5,280 feet, earning it the nickname Mile High City (Encyclopaedia Britannica).

Colorado’s two-front war: one law firm, four cases

Most state profiles stop at the mountains. Colorado’s distinctive modern story is legal: it is the recurring venue where one advocacy organization, the Alliance Defending Freedom, has pressed First Amendment claims against the state’s anti-discrimination law — and twice reached the US Supreme Court and won. The first front was expressive work. On June 30, 2023, the Supreme Court decided 303 Creative, LLC v. Elenis, holding that the government may not compel an individual engaged in expressive activity protected by the First Amendment to provide speech contrary to that individual’s sincerely held beliefs (Faegre Drinker). The company offered custom website design and wanted to expand into wedding webpages, but its owner believed marriage should be available only to heterosexual couples and feared Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act would require offering wedding websites to all couples (Faegre Drinker). The district court denied the injunction sought and the Tenth Circuit agreed, but the Supreme Court reversed, on facts the parties had stipulated — that the custom webpages were “pure speech” — and confirmed that states generally may enforce broad public-accommodation laws except where enforcement would violate the Constitution (Faegre Drinker).

The second front was the counseling room. In Chiles v. Salazar (2026), the Supreme Court ruled that Colorado could not enforce its ban on conversion therapy as applied to a counselor whose practice involves providing only talk therapy to minors (Super Lawyers). Colorado’s Minor Conversion Therapy Law, passed in 2019, prohibits mental-health professionals from engaging in conversion therapy with clients under 18 (Super Lawyers). Kaley Chiles, a licensed counselor in Colorado who practices talk therapy, argued with ADF representing her that the law infringed her constitutional rights by interfering with her ability to treat clients pursuing their own stated goals (Super Lawyers). A federal district court denied her preliminary injunction and the Tenth Circuit affirmed, finding the law only incidentally involved speech (Super Lawyers). In an 8–1 decision, the justices sided with Chiles: as applied to her talk therapy, the law regulated speech based on viewpoint and therefore required more rigorous First Amendment scrutiny, so the case was reversed and remanded (Super Lawyers). The ruling is narrow — as-applied to talk therapy, not a facial invalidation — but its implication reaches more than two dozen states with similar bans (Super Lawyers).

Two further fronts are still open, and the distinction matters. In September 2026, ADF attorneys filed Christian Medical & Dental Associations v. Sullivan in the US District Court for the District of Colorado on behalf of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations and Button Family Practice, a family-owned primary-care clinic in southern Colorado (Alliance Defending Freedom). ADF’s argument, as stated in its announcement, is that the Colorado Supreme Court and another state court recently interpreted the state’s anti-discrimination law to force medical providers who prescribe hormones or perform procedures for other conditions to also provide gender-transition drugs and surgeries or risk prosecution (Alliance Defending Freedom). That is a filing allegation, not a court finding, and no ruling on it is claimed here. Separately, in July 2026, ADF lawyers filed paperwork to join the legal team defending the Elizabeth School District, which was sued after removing 18 books from its school libraries (Chalkbeat). The controversy began in fall 2024 in Elbert County, the removed books are primarily by or about LGBTQ people, people of color, or both, and the books are back on shelves while the case is pending (Chalkbeat). The district’s 2025 filing argued that a school library’s curation decisions are government speech immune from First Amendment scrutiny (Chalkbeat).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not claim any outcome for Christian Medical & Dental Associations v. Sullivan or the Elizabeth school-district case, both pending at last report, and it does not present ADF’s characterisation of Colorado law in the CMDA filing as a court finding. It does not claim that Chiles facially invalidated Colorado’s conversion-therapy statute; the ruling was as-applied to talk therapy with remand for strict-scrutiny review. It does not repeat the district spokesman’s “20-win” Supreme Court figure for ADF as verified fact, and it does not claim a current governor, legislature composition, GDP figure, or 2026 election outcome, none of which appears in the sources relied on here.