A proposal to speed up law enforcement’s access to social media data is advancing in the Colorado Legislature, drawing testimony from the residents of Evergreen, where a school shooting took place, and questions from opponents worried about privacy and constitutional limits.

On Sept. 10, Desmond Holly, 16, entered Evergreen High School with a loaded revolver, shooting and injuring two students before committing suicide.

While both students survived the shooting, Evergreen and its surrounding communities have spent the last six months traumatized, according to Rep. Tammy Story, D-Conifer.

“This unspeakable tragedy left a profound life-long impact on everyone within those school walls,” she said. “Even now, some teachers and students struggle to return to the building, haunted by graphic memories that stay with them every single day.”

Story’s House Bill 1255, which she sponsored with Sen. Lisa Cutter, D-Evergreen, would require social media companies to establish a streamlined process to allow law enforcement agencies to contact them about search warrants. Under the proposal, the tech companies would need to staff a hotline, acknowledge receipt of a search warrant within eight hours and provide status updates on warrant compliance.

A similar bill requiring social media companies to comply with search warrants within 72 hours became law last week. Story and Cutter’s proposal would shorten that deadline to 24 hours in certain situations.

Following the Evergreen shooting, the community learned that the Anti-Defamation League, an organization that seeks to combat antisemitism, had reported one of Holly’s social media posts to the FBI two months before the shooting.

Story said that, under Colorado’s current system, it can take up to three separate search warrants to identify the individual responsible for a social media post. She said it took 75 days for the warrants to work their way through the system and reach the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, and by then it was too late.

The warrants arrived two days after the shooting.

“The clock ran out because the process was too slow, and that is a failure we are here to fix today,” she told the House Judiciary Committee last month.

Several Judiciary Committee members said they are worried that HB 1255 might violate the Fourth Amendment and the state-action doctrine, which holds that the Fourteenth Amendment applies only to government actors, not private individuals or organizations.

Rep. Matt Soper, R-Delta, said the recently-signed legislation that was similar to the new measure was “carefully drafted” to avoid some of the pitfalls he sees in HB 1255.

“I am very concerned about the precedent that could be established” should the bill pass, Soper said, adding that it could potentially be struck down by the courts.

Rep. Cecelia Espenoza, D-Denver, a former judge, agreed with Soper’s worries. She added is confident that Story would get the bill to a good place by the time it reaches the House floor.

“I have a real struggle voting for a bill that to me has fundamental Fourth Amendment constitutional issues,” she said, adding that she is confident the other bill would at least resolve the concerns over search warrant response times.

“No matter what happens with this bill, there will be some requirements from the state of Colorado on social media companies to timely respond to the subpoenas,” Espenoza added.

Story said the state bill would not ask companies to remove posts or shut down websites.

“It simply demands that, when a specific imminent threat is identified, the information moves fast enough to save lives,” Story told the committee.

Jefferson County Sheriff Reggie Marinelli said she received a call from the FBI within 48 hours of the Evergreen shooting, saying the federal agency had submitted three search warrants to social media platforms regarding Holly’s posts.

Holly had posted a photo of a revolver and a case of bullets to his X account the morning of the shooting, according to a Congressional report. Other reports said his only activities suggested a “fascination with mass shootings.”

“We have gotten to a point where social media platforms and the usage of social media have taken a toll on what we do and our abilities to stay ahead of it,” said Marinelli. “I really don’t think our leaders of this country many many years ago, when they were building our Constitution, thought about what we would be dealing with today.”

Marinelli argued the bill does nothing to expand government power or weaken privacy protections. Ultimately, she said, it is about learning from past mistakes to ensure they never happen again.

Software engineer Joel Benjamin said the bill is well-intentioned but “a flawed technical solution” that would not save lives.

There is no evidence that requiring social media platforms to provide large amounts of data to law enforcement prevents shootings, Benjamin said. He argued that the bill’s proposals are simply “security theater,” a term for measures that provide a sense of safety but do little to achieve it.

Additionally, Benjamin said, if the bill passes, social media companies will likely just use artificial intelligence to review content and mistakenly flag posts that don’t violate the platform’s policies.

“This bill will funnel thousands of innocuous posts from Colorado citizens into police databases,” he said. “Individuals who have been flagged will have no idea they’ve been flagged.”

Surveillance tools are only as ethical as the people who use them, Benjamin told the committee.

“I encourage us to not trade the illusion of safety for a certainty of state surveillance. If we want our schools to be safe, we must provide actual resources to children, school employees, and working families. If any digital interaction is a potential police report, digital interactions may drop, but violence in our communities would continue,” Benjamin said.

Tyler Guyton, a senior and student body president at Evergreen High School, said he and his classmates have “been through the unimaginable.”

“We have been instilled with a fear since we were in the early years of elementary school — a fear that we wish never came true, and a fear that yes, did come true, but not necessarily a fear that has to happen again,” he said. “September 10, 2025, was a dark day, and while our innocence and sense of safety have been shattered, a brave and hopeful idea has been born out of the chaos — an idea that will save lives.”

Guyton argued that social media platforms have a duty to protect users by alerting law enforcement when users post content that violates their guidelines and could pose a real-life threat.

House Bill 1255 passed on a 7-4 party-line vote and will now be debated on the House Floor.

U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen, who represents Jefferson County, has introduced federal legislation to reduce delays in identifying threatening online posts.