Colorado employers can no longer hold onto a candidate's or employee's government-issued identification documents at will. House Bill 26-1283, effective June 3, 2026, generally prohibits an employer or its agent from demanding, confiscating, retaining, or otherwise requiring an employee, applicant, or other individual performing or seeking work to surrender a government-issued identification card. The law is codified at C.R.S. § 8-2-124.5.

The statute touches the most routine people-process in HR: employment eligibility verification. Employers may still request and temporarily possess an identification card to complete Form I-9 or a successor form, but if they take possession of an original, they may retain it only as long as necessary to complete the verification and make a permitted copy — and never for more than 10 hours. Employers may keep a copy of the document in their employment records.

Two exceptions exist. Retention is permitted when otherwise required or allowed by state or federal law or regulation, or under a signed judicial warrant.

A new written notice requirement

The bigger operational change for hiring teams is a mandatory written notice. When verifying an individual's employment eligibility, Colorado employers must provide a notice informing the individual of the law's restrictions on an employer's possession and retention of government-issued identification cards.

The notice must be in English — and, if the employer knows the individual's primary language is not English, in that primary language as well. Employers must obtain an acknowledgment from the individual and retain records of both the notice and the acknowledgment in the employment file.

That language requirement is worth flagging for recruiters and hiring managers. It shifts part of the compliance burden onto knowledge of a candidate's primary language, which means onboarding teams need a consistent way to capture that information early in the process. Employers should also consider repeating the same notice process whenever a required Form I-9 reverification occurs, since reverification triggers the verification workflow the statute covers.

What HR teams should audit now

Colorado employers should review onboarding and reverification procedures to confirm five things:

• Originals of government-issued identification cards are returned promptly after review and any permitted copying.
• No original identification card is retained longer than necessary — and in no event longer than 10 hours.
• The required written notice is provided as part of the employment eligibility verification process.
• Translated notices are provided when an employee's non-English primary language is known.
• Documentation showing the notice was provided and acknowledged is retained.

Training is the second half of the fix. HR personnel and other employees responsible for Form I-9 compliance need instruction so the new Colorado requirements fold into existing federal verification procedures rather than running alongside them as a separate, easily missed step.

On drafting the notice itself, Lindsay Rose, a Colorado Springs–based business attorney at Fennemore who focuses on employment and contract law, urges caution. Employers shouldn't rely solely on AI-generated content or information found online, she writes. Legal requirements change and vary with a company's circumstances, so the notice should be reviewed by legal counsel and tailored to specific needs.

The compliance gap to close

For multi-state employers, the practical question is whether Colorado-specific workflows already exist or need to be built. A 10-hour hard cap on holding an original document is an unusual, bright-line rule, and it interacts with common practices — overnight document storage during multi-day onboarding, for example, or front-desk staff collecting IDs at the start of a shift for later review — that could now create exposure.

Employers that have not yet updated their Form I-9 procedures should do so promptly, and those with questions about HB 26-1283, eligibility verification, or the required notice should consult employment counsel. As more states layer document-handling restrictions onto the federal I-9 framework, Colorado's model of a hard retention deadline plus a bilingual notice mandate may signal what HR compliance teams elsewhere will need to build next.