A federal judge last week dismissed the constitutional claim against leaders of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment over a 2025 law requiring health disclosures on new gas-fueled stoves.

In June, Gov. Jared Polis signed House Bill 1161 into law, which requires retailers of gas stoves to affix a “yellow adhesive label” that reads “UNDERSTAND THE AIR QUALITY IMPLICATIONS OF HAVING AN INDOOR GAS STOVE.” The label must also include a URL or QR code to a webpage created by the health department that provides “credible, evidence-based information on the health impacts of gas-fueled stoves.”

The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers filed a complaint asserting a single First Amendment violation and seeking an injunction against the law. As defendants, the association named Attorney General Phil Weiser, whose office would enforce any consumer protection violations. It also named Jill Hunsaker Ryan, the director of the health department, and Jeff Lawrence, a division director.

But in a Nov. 25 order, U.S. District Court Judge S. Kato Crews agreed the health department officials could not be sued because they have no connection to the enforcement of HB 1161.

“Here, Plaintiff’s compliance with the labeling requirement is not affected by any action the CDPHE Defendants could take. Instead, the CDPHE Defendants are merely complying with the Act themselves” by creating the required webpage, he wrote.

The appliance manufacturers’ association is seeking to permanently block Colorado from enforcing the gas stove labeling requirement. The law allegedly compels the association’s members to express a message in violation of the First Amendment by linking to the state’s webpage.

The message on the label is “neither purely factual nor uncontroversial — there is no scientific consensus that gas stove use causes any health affects — but the labeling requirements force them to speak this message anyway,” wrote lawyers for the association.

The health department officials moved to dismiss the claim against them, arguing their obligation to create the webpage did not, by itself, violate the association’s rights.

“Because it is government speech, the website itself is not subject to First Amendment scrutiny,” wrote the Colorado Attorney General’s Office. The department’s “separate duty, to produce and publish government speech, is independent from both the Labeling Requirement and its enforcement.”

The association responded that the health department is involved in “enforcing” HB 1161 in the sense that it effectuates some of the law’s provisions.

The department “is solely responsible for the creation, publication, and maintenance of the website that represents a major portion of the mandated speech that forms the basis of the constitutional violation at issue,” the plaintiff’s lawyers wrote.

Crews agreed with the health officials. He noted the core of the legal challenge was to the labeling requirement for gas stoves, not to the state’s webpage.

“Retailers have a duty under the Act to include the label and QR code on the gas-fueled stoves they sell in Colorado, while the CDPHE Defendants only have the ministerial role of creating the website that the label itself directs consumers to,” Crews wrote. “Here, Plaintiff’s compliance with the labeling requirement is not affected by any action the CDPHE Defendants could take. Instead, the CDPHE Defendants are merely complying with the Act themselves.”

The lawsuit will proceed against Weiser.

The case is Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers v. Hunsaker Ryan et al.