A Colorado state legislator now running for Congress is catching heat for voting in favor of a bill that would have directed family courts to treat "misgendering" and "deadnaming" a child as forms of coercive control in custody disputes. The vote by Democratic state Rep. Manny Rutinel has handed Republicans a ready-made attack line in one of the tightest House races in the country.
Rutinel cast his vote in support of the Kelly Loving Act, a measure that passed the Colorado House 40-24. The bill, as originally written, instructed courts weighing child custody decisions to consider a parent's refusal to use a child's preferred name or pronouns as evidence of coercive control, a legal concept typically reserved for patterns of domestic abuse. The provision effectively threatened custody consequences for parents who declined to affirm a child's gender transition.
The Kelly Loving Act's most contentious language targeted so-called "deadnaming," the practice of using a transgender person's birth name, and "misgendering," referring to someone by pronouns that do not match their stated gender identity. Under the original text Rutinel supported, both could be treated as abusive behavior in family court proceedings.
Colorado's governor signed the bill into law in May 2025, but only after the misgendering and deadnaming provisions were stripped out during the legislative process. The removal came after Rutinel had already voted for the full, unaltered version, as Fox News first reported. That original vote is the one drawing scrutiny.
The timeline matters. Rutinel did not vote for the watered-down version that eventually became law. He voted for the version that would have let a judge consider a parent's choice of pronouns when deciding who gets custody of a child. The controversial provisions were removed later, without any indication that Rutinel pushed for the change.
The National Republican Congressional Committee wasted no time framing Rutinel's vote as a window into his governing philosophy. NRCC spokesperson Zach Bannon issued a statement tying the vote directly to Rutinel's congressional bid.
"Far-left liberal Manny Rutinel wants the government to take away your kids if you don't adopt his radical transgender agenda. Disgusting and disqualifying. Rutinel will be resoundingly rejected by Coloradans this fall."
The language signals how Republicans plan to use the vote in the general election. In a district where margins are razor-thin, a vote that can be summarized as "the government can take your kids if you use the wrong pronouns" is the kind of issue that moves persuadable voters.
Rutinel is challenging Republican Rep. Gabe Evans in Colorado's 8th Congressional District, widely rated as one of the most competitive races in the country. Evans flipped the seat in 2024, and both national parties view the district as a top-tier battleground heading into the next cycle.
Strip away the campaign trail fireworks and a serious legal question sits underneath: should a parent's refusal to use preferred pronouns factor into a court's custody determination?
Family courts already weigh a wide range of parental behavior when deciding what arrangement serves a child's best interest. Judges can consider evidence of neglect, substance abuse, domestic violence, and emotional harm. The Kelly Loving Act, in its original form, would have added gender-identity language to that framework, effectively telling judges that pronoun usage is relevant evidence of whether a parent is exercising coercive control over a child.
For conservatives, the implications are stark. Parents with sincere religious or philosophical objections to gender-transition ideology could face custody consequences for acting on those beliefs. The bill, as Rutinel voted for it, drew no distinction between a parent who is hostile or abusive and one who simply declines to use new pronouns. Colorado's political environment has produced sharp internal Democratic conflicts before, but this vote cuts along a different fault line: parental rights versus gender-identity mandates enforced through the courts.
Rutinel's vote does not exist in a vacuum. Colorado's Democratic caucus has moved steadily leftward in recent sessions, and the state has become a proving ground for progressive policy experiments that often outpace the national party's comfort zone.
The state has seen Democratic Socialists push deeper into the party structure, winning primaries and pulling the legislative agenda further left. That dynamic helps explain how a bill treating pronoun usage as potential child abuse could clear a state House committee, reach the floor, and win 40 votes.
It also helps explain why national Republicans see Rutinel as vulnerable. A state legislator who votes with the progressive wing on gender policy may play well in a deep-blue Denver district. Colorado's 8th, which stretches across suburban and exurban communities north of Denver, is a different electorate entirely.
Colorado has also drawn national attention for controversial Democratic figures winning primaries despite statements and positions that drew widespread condemnation. The pattern suggests a primary electorate that rewards ideological boldness, even when the general-election math argues for caution.
Investigators and journalists will need to determine whether Rutinel has publicly defended his vote on the original version of the Kelly Loving Act or distanced himself from the provisions that were later removed. No public statement from Rutinel explaining or defending the vote appears in the available reporting.
That silence may not last. In a competitive House race, the NRCC's statement reads like a preview of attack ads to come. Rutinel will face pressure to explain whether he still believes misgendering should carry custody consequences, or whether he views the bill's final, stripped-down version as the right outcome.
The distinction matters legally and politically. Voting for a bill that later gets amended is common in state legislatures. But the original text is the one that reveals a legislator's instincts, and Rutinel's instinct was to vote yes on treating pronoun disputes as a form of child abuse.
Colorado's 8th Congressional District was created after the 2020 census and has been competitive from its first election. The district includes Adams and Weld counties, areas with large working-class and Latino populations where cultural issues can cut sharply against progressive orthodoxy.
Rep. Gabe Evans, a military veteran and former law enforcement officer, won the seat by a narrow margin. National Democrats have targeted the district for a flip, but Rutinel's legislative record gives Evans a clear contrast to draw. In a cycle where consequential votes and legal decisions carry outsized political weight, a single roll call on a gender-identity bill could define the race.
The NRCC's framing, that Rutinel "wants the government to take away your kids," is blunt. It is also not far from what the bill's original text would have allowed. A judge weighing custody who is instructed by statute to consider misgendering as coercive control has been given a tool to penalize parents for their beliefs. Whether that tool would be used aggressively or sparingly is beside the point for voters who believe the government has no business in that conversation at all.
State legislative votes rarely get national attention. This one will. The Kelly Loving Act, in its original form, represented one of the most aggressive attempts in any state to embed gender-identity ideology into family law. Rutinel voted for it. The provisions were removed, but his vote was not.
For voters in Colorado's 8th District, the question is straightforward: should a parent lose custody for using the wrong pronoun? Rutinel's vote said yes. That answer will be hard to walk back in a general election where parental rights are not an abstraction but a kitchen-table issue.
When a legislator's instinct is to let the state punish parents for how they speak to their own children, voters deserve to know before they send that person to Congress.
