科罗拉多州的信用报告错误:法律怎么规定的

法条怎么规定的

小额诉讼上限

$7,500. C.R.S. 13-6-403(1)(a): "The small claims court has concurrent original jurisdiction with the county and district courts in all civil actions in which the debt, damage, or value of the personal property claimed by either the plaintiff or the defendant, exclusive of interest and costs, does not exceed seven thousand five hundred dollars, including such civil penalties as may be provided by law." The phrase "including such civil penalties as may be provided by law" matters here: statutory awards under C.R.S.

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5-18-117 count toward the $7,500 ceiling rather than sitting outside it.

Small claims is usually the wrong forum for a Colorado credit-reporting claim, and the default escalation for this topic is the county court rather than the small claims court. C.R.S.

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13-6-407(2)(a)(II) states the legislature's intent that "no attorney, except pro se or as an authorized full-time employee or active general partner of a partnership, an authorized active member or full-time employee of a union, a full-time officer or full-time employee of a for-profit corporation, or a full-time employee or active member of an association, which partnership, union, corporation, or association is a party, shall appear or take any part in the filing or prosecution or defense of any matter in the small claims court, except as permitted by supreme court rule."

That exclusion is what makes small claims costly here. C.R.S. 5-18-117 awards the consumer reasonable attorney fees and costs on top of damages, and it awards them one way only — the statute gives no fee award to a prevailing agency. Because consumer-law attorneys will often take a statutory-damages case with a one-way fee shift on contingency, filing in small claims court gives up the single most valuable feature of the Colorado remedy. The $7,500 ceiling compounds the problem, since C.R.S. 13-6-403(1)(a) measures it "including such civil penalties as may be provided by law", so statutory awards are counted against the limit rather than added on top of it.

Small claims court remains a reasonable choice for a self-represented consumer with a single inaccurate entry who does not intend to retain a lawyer, and it can fit a Colorado Fair Debt Collection Practices Act claim under C.R.S. 5-16-107(1)(i), whose additional damages in an individual action are capped at one thousand dollars. Note that the Colorado FDCPA route carries a loser-pays rule that applies wherever the case is filed — C.R.S. 5-16-113(2): "In the case of any unsuccessful action brought under this section, the plaintiff shall be liable to each defendant in an amount equal to that defendant's cost incurred in defending the action, together with reasonable attorney fees as may be determined by the court."

法条编号

The Colorado Consumer Credit Reporting Act, C.R.S. 5-18-101 et seq. The short title comes from the article's own first section, C.R.S.

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5-18-101: "The short title of this article 18 is the 'Colorado Consumer Credit Reporting Act'." The article is properly cited as "5-18-101 et seq." rather than as a "5-18-101 through 5-18-118" range, because the article also contains two decimal sections — 5-18-112.5 (security freeze for protected consumers) and 5-18-113.5 (notice of rights regarding protected consumers), both added by HB 18-1233 effective January 1, 2019 — that a closed range silently drops.

HISTORY. Originally enacted as C.R.S. Title 12, Article 14.3 by Senate Bill 95-122, 1995 Colo. Sess. Laws ch. 143; Section 5 of that act made Section 3 — the section that added Article 14.3 — effective January 1, 1996, and applicable to acts occurring on or after that date. The article was relocated to Title 5, Article 18 in 2017 by HB 17-1238, ch. 260, effective August 9, 2017. It has been amended four times since, per the section source notes in the official CRS 2026 printout: HB 18-1233, ch. 75, effective January 1, 2019 (the protected-consumer freeze provisions, plus amendments to 5-18-116 and 5-18-117 that left the one-thousand-dollar / thirty-day damages structure in place but restructured the 5-18-117 cure trigger into clauses (A) and (B), so that missing either step now triggers liability); SB 21-266, ch. 423, p. 2794, sec. 1, effective July 2, 2021 (5-18-108(1)(d), the free annual disclosure); SB 22-099, ch. 276, p. 1980, secs. 1-2, effective August 10, 2022 (the 5-18-105 duty to exclude sealed and expunged records, and 5-18-109(1)(e.5)); and HB 23-1126, ch. 374, pp. 2239-40, secs. 1-3, effective August 7, 2023 (the 5-18-103(11.5) "medical debt" definition, the 5-18-109(1)(f) medical-debt reporting ban, and 5-16-107(1)(r) in the Colorado Fair Debt Collection Practices Act).

THE DAMAGES SCHEDULE IS NOT 1995 VINTAGE. This matters because the FCRA grandfather clauses protect only "State law in effect on September 30, 1996." As enacted, former 12-14.3-108(2) made a negligently violating agency liable for actual damages or five hundred dollars, whichever is greater, plus reasonable attorney fees and costs, and relieved it of that liability if within sixty days after receiving notice of dispute it corrected the complained-of item and sent the consumer written notification of the corrective action — a flat five hundred dollars on a sixty-day cure, with no per-entry measure and no creditworthiness qualifier. The structure now in 5-18-117 — the greater of actual damages or one thousand dollars, measured on the statute's terms per inaccurate or unblocked entry, which is a reading of the text that no Colorado court has confirmed and that a credit bureau will contest, on a thirty-day cure — entered the code through SB 97-133, 1997 Colo. Sess. Laws ch. 114, which took effect August 1, 1997, and it was already in place in former 12-14.3-108(2)(a) as printed in the CRS 2016 edition. August 1, 1997 is after September 30, 1996, so the 1995 text sits inside the federal grandfather and the damages schedule in force today does not. HB 18-1233, sec. 7, effective January 1, 2019, later added the protected-consumer language and restructured the cure trigger into clauses (A) and (B) without changing the damages amounts.

WHAT THE ARTICLE ADDS. Colorado is a genuine state overlay rather than a restatement of federal law, and its most letter-relevant content is substantive rather than procedural: a ban on a bureau reporting adverse medical debt (5-18-109(1)(f), which is repealed effective July 1, 2028, is switched off for credit transactions above the federal conforming loan limit by 5-18-109(2), and is the subject of a pending federal challenge); a ban on sealed records, expunged records, and records that did not result in a conviction (5-18-109(1)(e.5)), backed by an affirmative exclusion duty on the bureau (5-18-105); a right to speak directly to a representative of the agency when disputing (5-18-110(1)); a free annual file disclosure obtained directly from each agency (5-18-106(2)(e)); an American Arbitration Association arbitration track (5-18-116); and a private damages schedule with a one-way fee shift in court (5-18-117).

律师费

One-way in the consumer's favour in Article 18 litigation, two-way in Article 18 arbitration, and two-way against the consumer on the Colorado FDCPA route. Both C.R.S. 5-18-117(1) and 5-18-117(2) award "reasonable attorney fees and costs" on top of damages, and neither subsection gives fees to a prevailing agency.

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But under subsection (2) that award is conditional: the whole clause is governed by the closing "if:", so the fees stand or fall with the failed thirty-day correct-and-confirm, exactly like the damages.

ARBITRATION IS THE RISKIER FORUM, ON FEES AND ON FINALITY. C.R.S. 5-18-116(2) provides that "A successful party to any arbitration proceeding shall be compensated for the costs and attorney fees of the proceeding as determined by the court or arbitration." "Successful party" is neutral, so a consumer who loses an arbitration can be ordered to pay the bureau's costs and fees. And the election is close to final: C.R.S. 5-18-118 makes the remedies of the article cumulative "except that a credit reporting agency shall not be subject to suit with respect to any issue that was the subject of an arbitration proceeding brought pursuant to section 5-18-116." A consumer who arbitrates and does badly cannot then sue on the same issue. Between the two Article 18 forums, the court route is the one that carries neither of those exposures.

THE COLORADO FDCPA ROUTE IS TWO-WAY AS WELL. Where a demand also runs a Colorado FDCPA theory under C.R.S. 5-16-107(1)(i) against a collection agency, C.R.S. 5-16-113(2) makes an unsuccessful plaintiff liable to EACH defendant for that defendant's costs and reasonable attorney fees.

Of the three postures, only the Article 18 court route is one-way in the consumer's favour — and even there, the fee award under 5-18-117(2) is conditional on the thirty-day cure having failed.

Scope limits

Nine limits a letter must respect. (1) DEFENDANT TYPE. Article 18 duties and damages run only against a "consumer reporting agency" as defined in 5-18-103(4); furnishers, creditors, collectors and landlords are outside Article 18 entirely, and state regulation of furnisher duties is separately preempted by 15 U.S.C.

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1681t(b)(1)(F). Check-verification and check-guarantee-only businesses are excluded from the definition. (2) CLAIMANT RESIDENCY. C.R.S. 5-18-103(2) defines a consumer as "a natural person residing in the state of Colorado". A non-resident, or a former Colorado resident who has moved away, cannot invoke Article 18 at all, so current residence — not the state the disputed tradeline came from — is the question that must be settled before any Colorado citation is used. (3) EXHAUSTION, ON THREE ALTERNATIVE TRACKS. 5-18-116(1) bars suit or arbitration until the consumer has followed, "as applicable", one of: "(a) All dispute procedures in section 5-18-110 and has received the notice specified in section 5-18-110 (6); (b) All of the block procedures in section 5-18-111; or (c) All of the freeze procedures in section 5-18-112 or 5-18-112.5." Accuracy disputes must satisfy both halves of clause (a) — a completed 5-18-110 dispute AND the 5-18-110(6) results notice — while identity-theft claims qualify through clause (b) and freeze claims through clause (c), neither of which requires a prior accuracy dispute. (4) THE CURE CONDITION, CREDITWORTHINESS, AND THE PER-ENTRY QUESTION. Neither branch of 5-18-117(2) pays anything unless the thirty-calendar-day cure has failed — the agency must have missed correcting the complained-of items or activities AND sending written notification of the corrective action, or (on the second trigger) missed the 5-18-111 block. There is no unconditional $1,000. Subject to that condition, the $1,000 measure under 5-18-117(2)(a) requires that the entry affect creditworthiness as defined in 5-18-103(6); entries that do not are limited by 5-18-117(2)(b) to a single $1,000 for all of them combined. Whether the per-entry measure reaches ordinary 5-18-110 disputes at all is contested, and no letter or calculator should multiply entries into a demanded total. (5) MEDICAL-DEBT BAN. In force but time-limited (repealed July 1, 2028), switched off for credit transactions above the FHFA one-unit conforming loan limit ($832,750 baseline for 2026) by 5-18-109(2), inapplicable to ordinary credit-card balances by the 5-18-103(11.5) carve-out, and under active challenge in ACA International v. Fulford (D. Colo. No. 1:25-cv-03530). (6) CRIMINAL-RECORD BAN. 5-18-109(1)(e.5) bars reporting "Sealed records, expunged records, and records that did not result in a conviction", but it sits inside subsection (1) and is therefore switched off by the 5-18-109(2) jumbo exception, which by its terms reaches only "the provisions of subsection (1) of this section". The separate exclusion duty at 5-18-105 is not covered by that exception; it yields on its own terms, where the user of the report demonstrates that the user is otherwise required to consider the information pursuant to state or federal statute, rule, or regulation. (7) FREEZE PROVISIONS. Preempted as to nationwide agencies under 15 U.S.C. 1681t(b)(1)(J); 5-18-115(1) further exempts an agency that "Acts only as a reseller of credit information" and "Does not maintain a permanent database of credit information from which new consumer reports or records are produced" (though it must still "honor any security freeze placed on a consumer report or record by another consumer reporting agency"), and 5-18-115(2) does not require check-service, deposit-account-information, or fraud-prevention companies to place freezes. The 5-18-111 identity-theft block separately exempts resellers under 5-18-111(4). (8) TEMPORAL, AND WHO COUNTS AS A PROTECTED CONSUMER. The Act applies to acts occurring on or after January 1, 1996 per Section 5 of SB 95-122. The protected-consumer freeze provisions in 5-18-112.5 date only from January 1, 2019, so they get no grandfather and are exposed under 1681t(b)(1)(J). Note that "protected consumer" is not a synonym for "minor": 5-18-103(13.5) covers a consumer who, at the time a security freeze request is made, is "(a) Under sixteen years of age; or (b) Represented by a representative", and 5-18-103(13.9) defines a representative to include a "Legal guardian who, pursuant to a testamentary or other trusteeship, power of attorney, or court appointment, is qualified to make decisions regarding the support, care, education, health, or welfare of an individual" — a clause carrying no age limit at all. Sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds fall outside clause (a) unless they are represented. This guidance is written for adult Colorado residents acting for themselves; representative-filed claims on behalf of a protected consumer are outside its scope. The sealed/expunged rules date from August 10, 2022 and the medical-debt rules from August 7, 2023 — an item reported before those dates was not unlawful when reported. (9) THE COLORADO FDCPA ALTERNATIVE IS NARROWER STILL. C.R.S. 5-16-107(1)(i) binds only a "debt collector or collection agency" — which includes debt buyers (5-16-103(8.5)) and a creditor collecting under a name suggesting a third party (5-16-103(3)(c)), but not an original creditor collecting in its own name (outside 5-16-103(3)(a); its staff are excluded by 5-16-103(3)(b)(I)). Its claim must be brought within one year (5-16-113(5)), an unsuccessful plaintiff pays each defendant's fees (5-16-113(2)), and damages are capped at actual damages plus up to $1,000 (5-16-113(1)(b)(I)) with no double recovery alongside the federal FDCPA (5-16-113(7)). Whether 15 U.S.C. 1681t(b)(1)(F) preempts a claim of this kind against a party that furnishes information to a bureau is contested and unresolved, and belongs in the letter as a stated risk. There are no county, population-threshold, or entity-size limitations in Article 18.

Defeasible rules

Nothing in Article 18 is waivable or overridable by private contract. The article contains no waiver clause, no "unless otherwise agreed" language, and no provision letting the parties contract around the duties or the damages schedule, and 5-18-118 makes the remedies cumulative with other law rather than subordinate to it.

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But "not waivable" is not "not defeasible," and this topic is unusually full of ways the right disappears. Nine of them, each one a limit on what a demand can honestly claim:

(1) THE THIRTY-DAY CURE DEFEATS ONE TRIGGER, NOT THE WHOLE SUBSECTION. Liability under 5-18-117(2) attaches only "if:" — and the statute then sets out two independent triggers, in the alternative. Under (2)(a)(I) and (2)(b)(I), the agency fails, "[w]ithin thirty days after receiving notice of dispute from a consumer ... in accordance with section 5-18-110," both to "Correct the complained of items or activities" and to "Send the consumer ... written notification of the corrective action, in accordance with section 5-18-110 (6), 5-18-112, or 5-18-112.5". Do both inside thirty days and the (I) trigger is not met. But under (2)(a)(II) and (2)(b)(II) the agency is equally liable if, "[w]ithin thirty days after receiving a copy of a police report alleging, or a certified court order finding, unauthorized activity, the consumer reporting agency does not block the information in accordance with section 5-18-111." Curing the dispute does not cure a missed block. There is no unconditional one thousand dollars on either branch: the damages and the attorney-fee award alike are hostage to those conditions, and neither may be presented as a total computed by multiplying the number of disputed entries. (2) FRIVOLOUS OR IRRELEVANT DISPUTES. C.R.S. 5-18-110(3) lets the agency terminate the reinvestigation if it "reasonably determines that the consumer's dispute is frivolous or irrelevant"; 15 U.S.C. 1681i(a)(3)(A) is to the same effect and expressly reaches a determination made "including by reason of a failure by a consumer to provide sufficient information to investigate the disputed information." A vague dispute may buy no reinvestigation at all — though an agency that terminates one must still "promptly notify the consumer of its determination and reasons, by mail, or if authorized by the consumer for that purpose, by telephone." Colorado adds one guardrail: "The presence of contradictory information in the consumer's file does not in and of itself constitute reasonable grounds for determining the dispute is frivolous or irrelevant." (3) IDENTITY-THEFT BLOCKS CAN BE DECLINED OR RESCINDED. Under 5-18-111(2)(a) an agency "may decline to block or may rescind any block of consumer information if, in the exercise of good faith and reasonable judgment," it believes any of four things, including that "[t]he consumer knowingly obtained possession of goods, services, or money as a result of the blocked transaction or transactions or the consumer should have known that he or she obtained possession of goods, services, or money as a result of the blocked transaction or transactions" — a standard that reaches what the consumer should have known, not only what he or she knew. Under 5-18-111(2)(b) the agency shall decline or rescind, but only "in the case of a block or block request based upon the filing of an order," and then only where "the sentencing court amends, dismisses, or withdraws its prior order to correct records issued pursuant to section 18-1.3-603 (7), and the consumer provides documentation from the court and proof of the consumer's identity" — three conditions, not the court's action alone, and none of them reaches a block resting on a police report alone. One limit runs the other way: "The prior presence of the blocked information in the consumer reporting agency's file on the consumer is not evidence of whether the consumer knew or should have known that he or she obtained possession of any goods, services, or money." (4) THE MEDICAL-DEBT BAN SUNSETS. C.R.S. 5-18-109(1)(f)(II): "This subsection (1)(f) is repealed, effective July 1, 2028." The collector-side companion is repealed on the same day: 5-16-107(1)(r)(II) reads "This subsection (1)(r) is repealed, effective July 1, 2028." That companion is a different kind of rule and is not a second reporting ban — 5-16-107(1)(r)(I) bars a debt collector or collection agency, when collecting a debt it "knows is medical debt," from making "a false, deceptive, or misleading representation that the medical debt will be included in a consumer report ... or factored into a consumer's credit score," and it carries its own carve-out, "unless the consumer report is to be used in connection with a credit transaction that involves, or that may reasonably be expected to involve, a principal amount that exceeds the national conforming loan limit value for a one-unit property as determined by the federal housing finance authority." The reporting ban in 5-18-109(1)(f) is also the target of the federal challenge described in (7). (5) LARGE CREDIT TRANSACTIONS SWITCH OFF ALL OF 5-18-109(1). Under 5-18-109(2) none of subsection (1) — medical debt, sealed and expunged records, or the obsolescence periods — applies to a consumer report "to be used in connection with a credit transaction involving, or that may reasonably be expected to involve, a principal amount that exceeds the national conforming loan limit value for a one-unit property as determined annually by the federal housing finance agency." (6) THE SEALED AND EXPUNGED EXCLUSION DUTY IS DEFEASIBLE BY THE REPORT USER. 5-18-105 excuses exclusion where "the user of the report demonstrates that the user is otherwise required to consider the information pursuant to state or federal statute, rule, or regulation." (7) FEDERAL PREEMPTION, not private agreement, is what actually knocks out parts of this statute. It has already displaced the security-freeze provisions as to nationwide agencies through 15 U.S.C. 1681t(b)(1)(J). Through 1681t(b)(1)(F) it is the standing defense to a state-law claim aimed at a furnisher's reporting conduct — that subparagraph carves out only the Massachusetts and California furnisher provisions, and Article 18 imposes no furnisher duties of its own in any event. And it is being urged against the 2023 medical-debt provisions in ACA International v. Fulford, No. 1:25-cv-03530 (D. Colo.), where no injunction or ruling on the merits has issued. The same grandfather argument — that these provisions post-date the September 30, 1996 cutoff in 1681t(b)(1)(E), the subparagraph that preempts state law on what a consumer report may contain — is available against the 2022 sealed-and-expunged rules, which that case does not challenge. (8) ARBITRATION IS A ONE-WAY DOOR. Private arbitration agreements with the bureau or the underlying creditor may compel the dispute out of court independent of Article 18, and 5-18-118 itself provides, as an exception to its cumulative-remedies rule, that "a credit reporting agency shall not be subject to suit with respect to any issue that was the subject of an arbitration proceeding brought pursuant to section 5-18-116." (9) ON THE COLORADO FDCPA ROUTE, two further defeaters. The bona fide error defense at 5-16-113(4) bars liability where the collector shows by a preponderance that "the violation was not intentional or grossly negligent and the violation resulted from a bona fide error, notwithstanding the maintenance of procedures reasonably adapted to avoid any such error." And 5-16-113(7) bars double recovery: "No damages under this section shall be recovered if damages are recovered for a like provision of said federal act."

Arbitration option

AVAILABLE, BUT THE TWO RISKS COME FIRST. C.R.S. 5-18-116(1) lets a consumer "submit an enforcement action to binding arbitration, in the manner set forth in the rules of the American Arbitration Association" instead of going to court. Before anyone elects it, two features of the Colorado scheme have to be understood.

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RISK 1 — THE FEE SHIFT RUNS BOTH WAYS. In court, 5-18-117 awards "reasonable attorney fees and costs" to the consumer and gives the agency nothing. In arbitration the shift is neutral: 5-18-116(2) provides that "A successful party to any arbitration proceeding shall be compensated for the costs and attorney fees of the proceeding as determined by the court or arbitration." "Successful party" is not limited to the consumer, so a consumer who loses an arbitration can be ordered to pay the bureau's costs and fees. For an unrepresented consumer this is the single strongest reason to stay out of arbitration.

RISK 2 — IT IS A ONE-WAY DOOR ON THE ISSUES ARBITRATED. Under C.R.S. 5-18-118 a credit reporting agency "shall not be subject to suit with respect to any issue that was the subject of an arbitration proceeding brought pursuant to section 5-18-116." A consumer who arbitrates an entry and does poorly cannot afterwards sue on that issue. The bar is scoped to the issue that was the subject of the arbitration: it does not extinguish issues that were never put to the arbitrator, and Article 18 otherwise makes remedies cumulative.

WHAT ARBITRATION DOES AND DOES NOT DO. Frequency is capped: 5-18-116(2) provides that a consumer, protected consumer, or protected consumer's representative "shall not submit more than one action to arbitration against any consumer reporting agency during any one-hundred-twenty-day period." The underlying debt is untouched: "An arbitrator's decision pursuant to this section does not affect the validity of any obligations or debts owed to any party" — a favourable award changes the reporting, not what is owed. Follow-through is enforced, and this part cuts the consumer's way: under 5-18-116(3), where a determination is made in the consumer's favour the adverse information "shall be blocked, removed, or stricken in a timely manner, or the consumer report or record shall be frozen within five days after receipt of the determination by the consumer reporting agency," and if the agency does not comply the consumer "may bring an action against the noncomplying agency pursuant to this section notwithstanding the one-hundred-twenty-day waiting period." Arbitration is also subject to the same 5-18-116(1) prerequisite as a court action — it is an alternative forum, not a shortcut past the dispute process.

DEFAULT POSITION. Court, unless the consumer has a specific reason of their own to prefer arbitration. Demand letters do not propose or steer toward arbitration; wherever the option is mentioned, Risk 1 and Risk 2 are stated before the mechanics.

Enforcement agency

For Article 18 itself there is no enforcement agency. That is not an omission in this summary — the Act simply creates none.

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The Colorado Consumer Credit Reporting Act sets up no administrative enforcement: it assigns no enforcement, licensing, rulemaking, or penalty authority over the Act to the attorney general, to the administrator of the Uniform Consumer Credit Code, or to a district attorney, and the one enforcement route the article does provide runs through the consumer. C.R.S. 5-18-116 is titled "Consumer's right to file action in court or arbitrate disputes," and it gives the consumer — not a regulator — the power to bring an action or submit an enforcement action to arbitration to determine whether the agency met its Article 18 obligations. That is why a demand letter is the operative instrument on this topic: no regulator is charged with pursuing an Article 18 accuracy claim on a consumer's behalf.

THE NEIGHBOURING STATUTE IS DIFFERENT, and the contrast is worth stating. The Colorado Fair Debt Collection Practices Act is administratively enforced: C.R.S. 5-16-114 provides that "Compliance with this article 16 shall be enforced by the administrator. The administrator may make reasonable rules for the administration and enforcement of this article 16, including standards of conduct for licensees and collection notices and forms." C.R.S. 5-16-103(1) identifies that official: "'Administrator' means the administrator of the 'Uniform Consumer Credit Code', articles 1 to 9 of this title 5, whose office is created in the department of law in section 5-6-103." So a false-credit-reporting complaint against a collection agency has a regulator behind it; an Article 18 accuracy complaint against a credit bureau does not.

FOR PRACTICAL ESCALATION OUTSIDE ARTICLE 18, the Colorado Attorney General's office accepts consumer complaints, and the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau enforces the FCRA and takes credit-reporting complaints against the nationwide bureaus. Both are administrative and mediation channels. Neither office can award the damages provided by C.R.S. 5-18-117, and filing a complaint does not trigger that remedy or start any clock under it. the Colorado Attorney General's consumer complaint form. https://coag.gov/office-sections/consumer-protection/consumer-credit-unit/ — the Attorney General's consumer credit unit page. https://www.consumerfinance.gov/complaint/ — the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's complaint portal, which is the federal route for credit-reporting complaints against the nationwide bureaus. Neither office enforces Article 18. A complaint filed at any of these addresses is an administrative and mediation channel: it does not by itself trigger the statutory damages remedy in C.R.S. 5-18-117, which is available only through a private action or arbitration under C.R.S. 5-18-116

Relationship to fcra

Colorado supplements the FCRA rather than replacing it, and a good letter cites both — but it must be honest about which half of each pair is actually better, and it must carry each Colorado advantage together with the condition attached to it.

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WHERE COLORADO ADDS SOMETHING FEDERAL LAW DOES NOT. Two of these are substantive, and they are the reason this topic is worth a Colorado overlay at all: the ban on reporting adverse medical debt (5-18-109(1)(f)) and the ban on sealed records, expunged records, and records that did not result in a conviction (5-18-109(1)(e.5)), backed by the affirmative exclusion duty at 5-18-105. Both carry limits that must travel with them — a July 1, 2028 repeal for the medical-debt ban, the conforming-loan-limit exception at 5-18-109(2) for both, and a pending court challenge to the medical-debt ban. A third substantive add outlives both of those limits: C.R.S. 5-18-109(3) bars an agency from furnishing, for employment purposes or in connection with a credit, insurance, or direct marketing transaction, a consumer report that contains medical information about a consumer unless the consumer consents to the furnishing of the report. Because it sits outside subsection (1), neither the July 1, 2028 repeal nor the 5-18-109(2) transaction-size exception reaches it, and it remains Colorado's medical-information rule after the ban lapses. The procedural adds: a thirty-day correct-and-confirm trigger; a $1,000-per-day escalator that runs only from ten days after entry of judgment; a free annual file disclosure obtained directly from each agency; a right to speak to a live representative when disputing (5-18-110(1)); a five-business-day furnisher-initiated correction channel (5-18-110(8)); proactive mailed notice after eight credit inquiries or a report that would add negative information; and an AAA arbitration alternative.

THE DAMAGES COMPARISON, STATED WITH ITS CONDITIONS. Colorado gives a statutory floor — the greater of actual damages or one thousand dollars — for merely NEGLIGENT violations, which is the headline difference: federal law's negligence remedy at 15 U.S.C. 1681o is built on actual damages plus costs and fees rather than on a statutory floor, and the federal statutory range is reserved for willful noncompliance, where 15 U.S.C. 1681n(a)(1)(A) gives "any actual damages sustained by the consumer as a result of the failure or damages of not less than $100 and not more than $1,000". Three qualifications must travel with that comparison or it becomes a misrepresentation. First, the Colorado floor is not unconditional: under 5-18-117(2) it is available only where the bureau failed, within thirty days of receiving the dispute, both to correct the item and to send written notification of the correction. Second, whether the Colorado figure is measured per inaccurate entry or once is contested on the statutory text and unresolved by any Colorado court, so the number must never be multiplied by the count of disputed entries and presented as an amount owed. Third, Colorado's treble multiplier for willful violations is written as automatic where federal punitive damages under 1681n(a)(2) are "such amount of punitive damages as the court may allow" — discretionary, but carrying no statutory cap, so Colorado should not be described as uncapped by contrast.

WHERE COLORADO IS WEAKER AND THE FEDERAL RULE SHOULD BE CITED INSTEAD. The reinvestigation window is thirty BUSINESS days under 5-18-110(1) against the federal 30-day period in 15 U.S.C. 1681i(a)(1)(A) — but state the federal rule with its extension, in the statute's own words: 1681i(a)(1)(B) provides that "Except as provided in subparagraph (C), the 30-day period described in subparagraph (A) may be extended for not more than 15 additional days if the consumer reporting agency receives information from the consumer during that 30-day period that is relevant to the reinvestigation." The identity-theft block is thirty days under 5-18-111(1)(a) against the federal rule that, "Except as otherwise provided in this section, a consumer reporting agency shall block the reporting of any information in the file of a consumer that the consumer identifies as information that resulted from an alleged identity theft, not later than 4 business days after the date of receipt" under 15 U.S.C. 1681c-2(a), whose clock starts only once all four listed items have been received. And the security-freeze rules are slower, require a request "in writing by certified mail," and let the agency charge for a temporary lift or a removal — though not for a consumer's first freeze request — where 15 U.S.C. 1681c-1(i)(2)(A) requires a nationwide agency, on a direct request from the consumer and on receiving proper identification, to place the freeze "free of charge" not later than one business day after a toll-free telephone or secure electronic request and three business days after a mailed one. That federal freeze rule reaches only the agencies the federal definition of a nationwide agency covers, so for a specialty bureau outside that definition the Colorado freeze provisions, slower and fee-bearing as they are, remain the applicable rules.

WHERE THEY ARE THE SAME AND COLORADO SHOULD NOT BE OVERSOLD. The five-business-day furnisher notice (5-18-110(2)) and the five-business-day results notice (5-18-110(6)) are state-law copies of 15 U.S.C. 1681i(a)(2)(A) and 1681i(a)(6)(A). Cite them for the Colorado remedy they attach, not as extra protections.

PLEADING BOTH. Because 5-18-118 makes the remedies cumulative, pleading Colorado and federal claims together is permitted, and the FCRA's savings provision at 15 U.S.C. 1681t(a) preserves state law except as specifically preempted by subsections (b) and (c). But the preemption picture is provision-specific: only the dispute-timing rules sit comfortably inside the September 30, 1996 grandfather, the 2022 and 2023 content rules do not, and the damages schedule now in force dates from August 1, 1997.

Security freeze rules

FOR THE NATIONWIDE BUREAUS, THE FEDERAL FREEZE RULES GOVERN, NOT THE COLORADO ONES. Colorado's freeze provisions are slower, more procedurally burdensome, and more expensive than federal law, and they are displaced.

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WHAT COLORADO SAYS. The request has to be made the hard way: C.R.S. 5-18-112(1)(a) provides that "A consumer may elect to place a security freeze on his or her consumer report by making a request in writing by certified mail to a consumer reporting agency." The agency then "shall place a security freeze on a consumer report no later than five business days after receiving the request from the consumer" (5-18-112(2)(a)); must "send a written confirmation of the security freeze to the consumer within ten business days" together with a unique personal identification number or password (5-18-112(2)(b)); must comply with a temporary-lift request "no later than three business days after receiving the request" (5-18-112(4)); and, except as otherwise provided in subsection (6)(b), "shall remove a security freeze within three business days of receiving a request for removal from the consumer" who supplies proper identification and that PIN or password (5-18-112(9)). On cost, 5-18-112(12)(b) bars a fee "for a consumer's first request to place a security freeze on his or her consumer report," but 5-18-112(12)(c) still permits "a reasonable fee of no more than ten dollars" for a temporary lift, a permanent removal, or a subsequent freeze after a first freeze has been permanently removed, and, except as provided in subsections (12)(a) and (12)(b), 5-18-112(12)(d) permits "a fee not to exceed twelve dollars for temporarily lifting a security freeze on the consumer report for a specific party."

WHY THE FEDERAL RULES CONTROL INSTEAD. 15 U.S.C. 1681c-1(i)(2)(A) requires a nationwide consumer reporting agency, on a direct request from the consumer with proper identification, to place the security freeze free of charge not later than 1 business day after a request made by toll-free telephone or secure electronic means, or 3 business days after a request made by mail. And 15 U.S.C. 1681t(b)(1)(J) preempts state law on the subject matter regulated under "subsections (i) and (j) of section 1681c-1 of this title relating to security freezes", with no grandfather clause of the kind that appears in subparagraphs (B) and (E). So with Equifax, Experian and TransUnion a consumer should use the free federal channel, and neither Colorado's certified-mail requirement nor its $10 and $12 fees should be treated as governing there. Colorado's freeze sections may still describe the obligations of agencies that fall outside the federal definition of a nationwide consumer reporting agency, such as specialty bureaus, but no Colorado decision has settled that residual scope.

TWO COLORADO CARVE-OUTS THAT STILL MATTER. C.R.S. 5-18-115(1)(a) provides that, "Except as specified in subsection (1)(b) of this section," sections 5-18-112 to 5-18-114 do not apply to a consumer reporting agency that acts only as a reseller of credit information assembled and merged from another agency's database and that "Does not maintain a permanent database of credit information from which new consumer reports or records are produced" — and 5-18-115(1)(b) is that exception: every agency must "honor any security freeze placed on a consumer report or record by another consumer reporting agency." Under 5-18-115(2), check service or fraud prevention companies, deposit account information services, and fraud prevention companies issuing reports to prevent or investigate fraud "are not required to place a security freeze in a consumer report or record."

A NOTE ON WHO COUNTS AS A PROTECTED CONSUMER. Colorado's separate protected-consumer freeze at 5-18-112.5 is not a general minors provision. C.R.S. 5-18-103(13.5) defines a protected consumer as one who, at the time the freeze request is made, is "(a) Under sixteen years of age; or (b) Represented by a representative." And "representative" is itself narrow: C.R.S. 5-18-103(13.9) reaches a "Parent of an individual who is under sixteen years of age" or a "Legal guardian who, pursuant to a testamentary or other trusteeship, power of attorney, or court appointment, is qualified to make decisions regarding the support, care, education, health, or welfare of an individual." So the parent of a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old is not a representative, and that child is outside the protected-consumer definition unless a court-appointed or power-of-attorney guardian acts. A separate fee rule does run to age eighteen: 5-18-112.5(10) bars any charge to place, temporarily lift, temporarily lift for a specific party, or permanently remove a freeze on the report or record of "any consumer under eighteen years of age."

Enforcement agency url

https://coag.gov/file-complaint/

Exhaustion prerequisite

REQUIRED, BUT ON THREE ALTERNATIVE TRACKS — not a single mandatory path. C.R.S. 5-18-116(1) allows a court action or an arbitration only after the consumer, protected consumer, or protected consumer's representative "has followed, as applicable: (a) All dispute procedures in section 5-18-110 and has received the notice…

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specified in section 5-18-110 (6); (b) All of the block procedures in section 5-18-111; or (c) All of the freeze procedures in section 5-18-112 or 5-18-112.5." The words "as applicable" and the "or" that closes clause (b) make the three clauses alternatives matched to the kind of complaint, so an identity-theft block claim or a security-freeze claim is not required to run the ordinary accuracy dispute first. The prerequisite governs both routes in the sentence: court and arbitration alike.

TRACK (a) — ORDINARY ACCURACY DISPUTES. Two conditions, not one: the consumer must have run the full 5-18-110 dispute AND must have received the written results notice. The statute confirms this from the other direction at 5-18-110(6)(f), which requires the results notice itself to contain "A notification of the consumer's rights to dispute resolution under section 5-18-116, which are available after the consumer has followed all dispute procedures described in this section and has received the notice specified under this subsection (6)." Practical sequencing on this track: the Colorado damages statute is the tool for a SECOND letter. A consumer who has not yet disputed needs a 5-18-110 dispute letter first; the 5-18-117 demand belongs after the bureau has failed that dispute.

TRACK (b) — IDENTITY-THEFT ENTRIES. Completing "All of the block procedures in section 5-18-111" — proof of identity plus either a qualifying police report or a certified court order issued pursuant to section 18-1.3-603 (7) — satisfies 5-18-116(1) on its own. Clause (b) makes no cross-reference to 5-18-110, so a consumer on this track is not gated behind an accuracy dispute or a results notice.

TRACK (c) — SECURITY FREEZES. Completing "All of the freeze procedures in section 5-18-112 or 5-18-112.5" likewise satisfies the prerequisite by itself. A separate problem limits this track in practice: 15 U.S.C. 1681t(b)(1)(J) preempts state law on the subject matter of "subsections (i) and (j) of section 1681c-1 of this title relating to security freezes" and carries no grandfather clause, so Colorado's freeze sections are displaced as to the nationwide bureaus and retain force mainly against agencies outside that federal category.

WHEN THE BUREAU NEVER ANSWERS. On track (a), a consumer who disputed and got nothing back has, read literally, not "received the notice specified in section 5-18-110 (6)", and a bureau will argue exactly that. The better reading is that an agency cannot defeat the remedy by withholding the very notice 5-18-110(6) obliges it to send — but no Colorado decision resolves the point, so treat it as an argument to preserve rather than a settled rule, and keep the fallback that the dispute procedures themselves were completed.

Post judgment escalator

One thousand dollars per day, per entry — but ONLY after a judgment, so nothing under this subsection accrues while a pre-suit demand is outstanding. C.R.S.

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5-18-117(3): "In addition to the damages assessed under subsections (1) and (2) of this section, if, ten days after the entry of any judgment for damages, the consumer's or protected consumer's file is still not corrected, blocked, or frozen by the consumer reporting agency, the assessed damages shall be increased to one thousand dollars per day per unfrozen consumer report or record or inaccurate or unblocked entry that remains in the consumer's or protected consumer's file until the inaccurate entry is corrected or blocked, or the consumer report or record is frozen." The clock starts ten days after entry of judgment, not on the date of a demand letter. What the subsection measures is the exposure a bureau faces if it litigates, loses, and then still does not correct, block, or freeze the file.

Reinvestigation deadline

Thirty business days under Colorado law, which is longer than the federal deadline, not shorter. C.R.S. 5-18-110(1) provides that where a consumer disputes an item directly with the agency, "the agency shall reinvestigate the item free of charge and record the current status of the disputed information on or before thirty business days after the date the agency receives notice conveyed by the consumer." Thirty business days is roughly six calendar weeks, and longer when public holidays fall inside the window.

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The Colorado figure is therefore not a consumer-favourable improvement on federal law, and a bureau is not late under 5-18-110(1) merely because thirty calendar days have gone by: on the thirty-first calendar day the Colorado reinvestigation window is normally still open, and a charge of lateness on that date has no support in this subsection.

THE FEDERAL CLOCK IS 30 DAYS THAT CAN BECOME 45. 15 U.S.C. 1681i(a)(1)(A) requires the reinvestigation "before the end of the 30-day period beginning on the date on which the agency receives the notice of the dispute from the consumer or reseller." Under 1681i(a)(1)(B), "Except as provided in subparagraph (C), the 30-day period described in subparagraph (A) may be extended for not more than 15 additional days if the consumer reporting agency receives information from the consumer during that 30-day period that is relevant to the reinvestigation." Sending supporting documents after the opening dispute is exactly what triggers that extension, so a flat statement that the bureau has only 30 days under federal law will be wrong in the most common fact pattern. The counter-limit is 1681i(a)(1)(C): "Subparagraph (B) shall not apply to any reinvestigation in which, during the 30-day period described in subparagraph (A), the information that is the subject of the reinvestigation is found to be inaccurate or incomplete or the consumer reporting agency determines that the information cannot be verified." The federal position is therefore a 30-day deadline that becomes a 45-day outer limit where the consumer supplies further relevant documents inside the first 30 days.

THE REINVESTIGATION DUTY IS DEFEASIBLE ON BOTH TRACKS. C.R.S. 5-18-110(3): "Notwithstanding subsection (1) of this section, a consumer reporting agency may terminate a reinvestigation of information disputed by a consumer under subsection (1) if the agency reasonably determines that the consumer's dispute is frivolous or irrelevant." The agency must then promptly notify the consumer of its determination and reasons, and the same subsection adds that "The presence of contradictory information in the consumer's file does not in and of itself constitute reasonable grounds for determining the dispute is frivolous or irrelevant." Federal law has the same out at 15 U.S.C. 1681i(a)(3), which expressly includes a failure by the consumer to provide sufficient information to investigate the disputed information. A dispute that is thin on specifics or documentation can be closed without any reinvestigation at all; the duty attaches to a dispute that identifies each item separately and states why it is wrong.

Colorado's damages clock is a different clock: it runs on thirty CALENDAR days from the agency's receipt of the dispute, and the two deadlines are not interchangeable.

Colorado's dispute machinery is mostly a state-law copy of the federal duties, plus two genuinely Colorado-only rights. The distinction is substantive: where Colorado restates a duty federal law already imposes, the state provision adds no obligation the bureau does not already carry.

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WHAT COLORADO COPIES FROM FEDERAL LAW. These provisions still matter, because a failure to meet them is a violation of article 18 and so carries the Colorado remedy in 5-18-117; they are not, however, additional duties. (1) Furnisher notification within five business days. C.R.S. 5-18-110(2): "On or before five business days after the date a consumer reporting agency receives notice of a dispute from a consumer in accordance with subsection (1) of this section, the agency shall provide notice of the dispute to all persons who provided any item of information in dispute." The federal original is 15 U.S.C. 1681i(a)(2)(A): "Before the expiration of the 5-business-day period beginning on the date on which a consumer reporting agency receives notice of a dispute from any consumer or a reseller in accordance with paragraph (1), the agency shall provide notification of the dispute to any person who provided any item of information in dispute, at the address and in the manner established with the person." (2) Written results notice within five business days of completion. C.R.S. 5-18-110(6): "A consumer reporting agency shall provide written notice of the results of any reinvestigation or reinsertion made pursuant to this section within five business days of the completion of the reinvestigation or reinsertion." The federal original is 15 U.S.C. 1681i(a)(6)(A), which requires written notice "not later than 5 business days after the completion of the reinvestigation." The six items the Colorado notice must contain, at 5-18-110(6)(a) to (f) — a statement that the reinvestigation is complete, the agency's determination on completeness or accuracy, a copy of the file or report with a description of the results, notice of the right to a description of the procedure used, notice of the right to add a consumer statement, and notice of the dispute-resolution rights under 5-18-116 — largely track 1681i(a)(6)(B).

Only 5-18-110(6)(f) has no federal counterpart, and it is operative rather than formal. It requires "A notification of the consumer's rights to dispute resolution under section 5-18-116, which are available after the consumer has followed all dispute procedures described in this section and has received the notice specified under this subsection (6)." On the accuracy track, the results notice is therefore both the end of the dispute stage and the document that unlocks the 5-18-116 right to sue or arbitrate. The identity-theft block track under 5-18-111 and the freeze track under 5-18-112 or 5-18-112.5 reach 5-18-116 by their own routes, under 5-18-116(1)(b) and (c), and do not depend on this notice.

GENUINELY COLORADO-ONLY. (1) A right to a live human. 5-18-110(1) requires the agency to "provide the consumer with the option of speaking directly to a representative of the agency to notify the agency of disputed information contained in the consumer's file." There is no federal counterpart. (2) A furnisher correction channel with a five-business-day fix. 5-18-110(8) requires the agency to give a person who provides credit information "the option to speak directly with a representative of the agency or to submit corrections to previously reported information by facsimile or other automated means when inaccurate information that was reported by the credit information provider appears on a consumer's file," and then, "in a period not to exceed five business days from the receipt of the faxed or automated information regarding the corrections, correct the inaccuracies on the consumer's file". Where the furnisher has already reported the correction to the agency, that five-business-day period runs against the agency independently of the reinvestigation clock.

OTHER OPERATIVE DUTIES. Under 5-18-110(4), where the disputed information is inaccurate or cannot be verified after reinvestigation, the agency must promptly delete it from the file, revise the file, provide the consumer and, at the consumer's request, any person who requested the disputed information within the last twelve months with a revised consumer report marked as revised, and refrain from reporting the information in subsequent reports; it must also advise the consumer of that twelve-month notification right. Under 5-18-110(5), "Information deleted pursuant to subsection (4) of this section may not be reinserted in the consumer's file unless the person who furnishes the information reinvestigates and states in writing or by electronic record to the consumer reporting agency that the information is complete and accurate." Under 5-18-110(7), nothing in the section requires a person who obtains a consumer report for resale to alter or correct an inaccuracy in a report that person did not assemble or prepare.

Free credit report rights

Colorado gives a free annual file disclosure directly from each consumer reporting agency, independent of the federal annualcreditreport.com system, and adds proactive mailed notice in two triggering situations.

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THE ANNUAL RIGHT. C.R.S. 5-18-106(2)(e): "Each consumer reporting agency shall, upon request of a consumer, provide the consumer with one disclosure copy of his or her file per year at no charge whether or not the consumer has made the request in response to the notification required in subsection (2)(a) of this section. If the consumer requests more than one disclosure copy of his or her file per year pursuant to this subsection (2)(e), the consumer reporting agency may charge the consumer up to eight dollars for each additional disclosure copy." That is the provision that carries the free annual copy itself.

THE FEE BAR IS NARROWER THAN THE RIGHT. C.R.S. 5-18-108(1)(d) bars any charge for "The first copy of a consumer disclosure provided to a consumer each calendar year pursuant to section 5-18-106 (2)(a)." By its terms that paragraph cross-references the notification-triggered copy at 5-18-106(2)(a), not the general annual right at 5-18-106(2)(e). The two provisions therefore cover different ground. 5-18-108(1)(d) was amended by SB 21-266 effective July 2, 2021.

PROACTIVE NOTICE AFTER EIGHT INQUIRIES OR A NEW NEGATIVE ITEM. Under C.R.S. 5-18-106(2)(a) the agency must notify the consumer "by letter sent by first-class mail" that it will provide a disclosure copy of the file at no charge, and give a toll-free telephone number for requesting it, when one of two events occurs within a twelve-month period: "(I) The consumer reporting agency has received eight credit inquiries pertaining to the consumer; or (II) The consumer reporting agency has received a report that would add negative information to a consumer's file." Two limits sit next to it. 5-18-106(2)(b): "A consumer reporting agency need only send one letter to a consumer per twelve-month period pursuant to subsection (2)(a) of this section even if more than one event occurs in that period." And 5-18-106(2)(d) permits a form letter, "except that each letter shall advise the consumer of the number and type of events that occurred relating to the consumer that initiated the letter," and requires the letter to include a notice or separate form the consumer may complete and return to request a free copy.

OTHER FREE DISCLOSURES. C.R.S. 5-18-108(1) also bars any charge for "A request for a copy of the consumer's file made within sixty days after adverse action is taken", for notifying persons the consumer designates of the deletion of information found to be inaccurate or that can no longer be verified, and for a set of instructions plus a toll-free assistance number. For everything else, 5-18-108(2) permits "a reasonable charge, not to exceed the retail price of a written report rendered in the normal course of business to the customers of the agency for each request for information."

Statutory damages willful

Three times the amount of actual damages, or one thousand dollars, whichever is greater — a one-thousand-dollar floor with a treble multiplier above it — plus reasonable attorney fees and costs. C.R.S.

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5-18-117(1): "A consumer reporting agency that willfully violates this article 18 or the federal "Fair Credit Reporting Act", 15 U.S.C. sec. 1681c, as amended, is liable for three times the amount of actual damages or one thousand dollars, whichever is greater, for a violation of section 5-18-112 or 5-18-112.5, or for each inaccurate or unblocked entry in the consumer's or protected consumer's file that was disputed or alleged to be unauthorized in accordance with section 5-18-111 by the consumer, protected consumer, or protected consumer's representative, plus reasonable attorney fees and costs."

THREE LIMITS. (1) Unlike the negligence subsection, subsection (1) carries no thirty-day cure precondition and no "affects creditworthiness" qualifier — its sentence ends at "costs." rather than at "costs if:" — but it uses the same "in accordance with section 5-18-111" phrase, so the same per-entry ambiguity applies here, and applies more sharply: the only unambiguous anchors in the willful branch are security-freeze violations and identity-theft block entries. As on the negligence branch, the statute supplies a per-entry measure rather than a liquidated total, and a sum produced by multiplying the number of entries by one thousand dollars is not an amount the statute says is owed. (2) Willfulness is a high bar. An ordinary accuracy dispute, with no police report and no certified court order behind it, does not by itself establish that a violation was willful. (3) Colorado's treble multiplier is not an uncapped remedy standing against a capped federal punitive-damages regime; that comparison is inaccurate. For willful noncompliance, 15 U.S.C. 1681n(a) gives "any actual damages sustained by the consumer as a result of the failure or damages of not less than $100 and not more than $1,000," plus "such amount of punitive damages as the court may allow" — discretionary, but carrying no statutory cap. The honest comparison is that Colorado's multiplier is written as automatic where federal punitive damages are discretionary, and that Colorado's floor is one thousand dollars where the federal statutory range bottoms out at one hundred.

Who is liable scope limit

CRITICAL SCOPE LIMIT — Article 18 reaches credit bureaus only, not the business that reported the debt. Every duty in Article 18, and both damages subsections of 5-18-117, are addressed to a "consumer reporting agency." C.R.S.

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5-18-103(4) defines that as "any person that, for monetary fees, dues, or on a cooperative nonprofit basis, regularly engages in whole or in part in the practice of assembling or evaluating consumer credit information or other information on consumers for the purpose of furnishing consumer reports to third parties," and expressly excludes "any business entity that provides check verification or check guarantee services only." Article 18 contains no duty running against furnishers of information — the word "furnish" appears only in describing what a bureau does, in the reinsertion rule at 5-18-110(5), and in the furnisher-correction channel at 5-18-110(8). A Colorado demand letter that cites 5-18-117 against the original creditor, debt collector, landlord, or bank that reported the item is citing a statute that does not apply to them. State regulation of furnisher duties is independently preempted by 15 U.S.C. 1681t(b)(1)(F), which bars state requirements on the subject matter of "section 1681s-2 of this title, relating to the responsibilities of persons who furnish information to consumer reporting agencies"; the grandfather carve-outs in that subparagraph are two out-of-state statutes — section 54A(a) of chapter 93 of the Massachusetts Annotated Laws and section 1785.25(a) of the California Civil Code, both as in effect on September 30, 1996 — and Colorado is not among them.

RESIDENCY LIMIT ON THE WHOLE ACT. C.R.S. 5-18-103(2) defines a consumer as "a natural person residing in the state of Colorado", and every Article 18 duty runs to a consumer so defined. A non-resident, and a former Colorado resident who has since moved away, cannot invoke Article 18 at all and is left with the federal FCRA. The gating question is therefore where the consumer LIVES NOW, not the state the disputed tradeline came from: a Colorado account belonging to someone who has moved to another state gets federal citations only.

THREE RECIPIENT BRANCHES, AND ONLY ONE OF THEM IS ARTICLE 18. BRANCH 1 — A CREDIT BUREAU. Article 18 applies in full: the 5-18-110 dispute duties, the 5-18-111 identity-theft block, and the 5-18-117 damages schedule, subject to the 5-18-116(1) prerequisite. BRANCH 2 — A THIRD-PARTY COLLECTION AGENCY, A DEBT BUYER, OR A CREDITOR COLLECTING UNDER ANOTHER NAME. Article 18 does not apply, but a narrow state hook does, and it lives in a different article. C.R.S. 5-16-107(1) (Colorado Fair Debt Collection Practices Act) provides that "A debt collector or collection agency shall not use any false, deceptive, or misleading representation or means in connection with the collection of any debt, including the following conduct:" and lists at (1)(i) "Communicating or threatening to communicate to any person credit information which is known or which should be known to be false, including the failure to communicate that a disputed debt is disputed". BRANCH 3 — AN ORIGINAL CREDITOR, BANK, HOSPITAL, OR LANDLORD THAT COLLECTS AND FURNISHES IN ITS OWN NAME. Neither Article 18 nor 5-16-107 applies. The credit-reporting hook is federal only: 15 U.S.C. 1681s-2(b), which is triggered only after the consumer disputes through the bureau. Do not route on the label alone. The branch turns on how the recipient collects, not on what it calls itself: an original creditor that collects under a name suggesting a third party belongs in branch 2, and so does a debt buyer that now furnishes in its own name as the current creditor.

FIVE LIMITS MUST TRAVEL WITH ANY 5-16-107(1)(i) CITATION, or it will be misused. (1) DEFENDANT TYPE, AGAIN. It binds only a "debt collector or collection agency." The definitions in C.R.S. 5-16-103 draw the line. 5-16-103(3)(a) defines a collection agency to mean any "(I) Person who engages in a business the principal purpose of which is the collection of debts; or (II) Person who: (A) Regularly collects or attempts to collect, directly or indirectly, debts owed or due or asserted to be owed or due another", along with the other listed activities in that paragraph; 5-16-103(3)(b)(I) separately excludes "Any officer or employee of a creditor while, in the name of the creditor, collecting debts for such creditor"; and 5-16-103(9) defines a debt collector as "any person employed or engaged by a collection agency to perform the collection of debts owed or due or asserted to be owed or due to another". Two express inclusions travel with that. C.R.S. 5-16-103(8.5) defines a debt buyer as "a person who engages in the business of purchasing delinquent or defaulted debt for collection purposes, whether it collects the debt itself, hires a third party for collection, or hires an attorney for litigation in order to collect the debt", and adds: "Debt buyers are collection agencies for the purposes of this article 16." And C.R.S. 5-16-103(3)(c) provides that, notwithstanding one of the exclusions, a collection agency "includes any person who, in the process of collecting his or her own debts, uses another name which would indicate that a third person is collecting or attempting to collect such debts." What 5-16-107(1)(i) does NOT reach is the original creditor, the bank, the hospital, or the landlord that collects and furnishes in its own name; it is a narrow collector rule, not a general hook against every furnisher. (2) ONE-YEAR DEADLINE. C.R.S. 5-16-113(5): "A private action to enforce any liability created by this section must be brought in any court of competent jurisdiction within one year from the date on which the violation occurs." That is a hard, sourced deadline, unlike Article 18, which has none. (3) LOSER PAYS. C.R.S. 5-16-113(2): "In the case of any unsuccessful action brought under this section, the plaintiff shall be liable to each defendant in an amount equal to that defendant's cost incurred in defending the action, together with reasonable attorney fees as may be determined by the court." A losing consumer pays every defendant's fees. That is a materially riskier posture than an Article 18 claim. (4) BONA FIDE ERROR DEFENSE. C.R.S. 5-16-113(4) bars liability where the collector shows by a preponderance "that the violation was not intentional or grossly negligent and the violation resulted from a bona fide error, notwithstanding the maintenance of procedures reasonably adapted to avoid any such error." (5) NO DOUBLE RECOVERY WITH THE FEDERAL FDCPA. C.R.S. 5-16-113(7): "The policy of this state is not to award double damages under this article 16 and the federal "Fair Debt Collection Practices Act", 15 U.S.C. sec. 1692 et seq. No damages under this section shall be recovered if damages are recovered for a like provision of said federal act." Pleading both does not double the money. The remedy itself is modest: C.R.S. 5-16-113(1) gives actual damages, plus "additional damages as the court may allow, but not to exceed one thousand dollars" in an individual action, plus costs and reasonable attorney fees on a successful action. Finally, whether 15 U.S.C. 1681t(b)(1)(F) preempts a 5-16-107(1)(i) claim of this kind — it is, after all, a state rule about what a furnisher may communicate to a bureau — is contested and unresolved. State that openly as a risk on this branch; do not assume it either way.

Against an original creditor or other non-collector furnisher, the credit-reporting hook really is federal only: 15 U.S.C. 1681s-2(b), triggered only after the consumer disputes through the bureau.

Arbitration bars later suit

ISSUE-SCOPED FINALITY — warn about it before a consumer elects arbitration. Article 18 remedies are otherwise cumulative; arbitration is the one carve-out. C.R.S.

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5-18-118: "The provisions of this article 18 are cumulative, and any action taken under the provisions of this article 18 shall not constitute an election to take any such action to the exclusion of any other action authorized by law; except that a credit reporting agency shall not be subject to suit with respect to any issue that was the subject of an arbitration proceeding brought pursuant to section 5-18-116."

READ THE SCOPE ACCURATELY, IN BOTH DIRECTIONS. The bar attaches to "any issue that was the subject of" the arbitration. So a consumer who arbitrates one entry and does poorly cannot then sue the bureau on that issue — but issues never put to the arbitrator, and remedies available under other law, are not extinguished, because the same sentence makes the article's provisions cumulative and expressly declines to treat one action as an election of remedies. Do not describe arbitration as forfeiting every claim against the bureau, and do not describe it as a reversible procedural step either: for the entry actually arbitrated, the door closes.

WHY IT DRIVES THE CHOICE OF FORUM. Arbitration also carries the neutral fee shift at 5-18-116(2), under which "A successful party to any arbitration proceeding shall be compensated for the costs and attorney fees of the proceeding as determined by the court or arbitration," whereas the court route under 5-18-117 awards fees to the consumer only. A binding, issue-ending forum combined with two-way fee exposure is the wrong default for an unrepresented consumer, so court is the default recommendation and letters do not steer toward arbitration. The one place the arbitration track clearly earns its keep is enforcement of a win: under 5-18-116(3) a favourable determination requires the adverse information to be blocked, removed or stricken "in a timely manner", or the consumer report or record to be frozen "within five days after receipt of the determination by the consumer reporting agency", and if the agency does not comply the consumer may bring an action against it at once, notwithstanding the one-hundred-twenty-day waiting period.

Federal preemption analysis

This is the load-bearing legal question for the topic, and the answer differs by provision. Handle it provision by provision; there is no single verdict.

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THE DISPUTE-TIMING RULES SURVIVE, on a grandfather the 1995 session law supports. 15 U.S.C. 1681t(b)(1)(B) preempts state law "with respect to any subject matter regulated under ... section 1681i of this title, relating to the time by which a consumer reporting agency must take any action, including the provision of notification to a consumer or other person, in any procedure related to the disputed accuracy of information in a consumer's file, except that this subparagraph shall not apply to any State law in effect on September 30, 1996." Colorado's timing rules fall inside that grandfather. SB 95-122 created the Act; Section 5 of that act provides "Section 3 of this act shall take effect January 1, 1996, and shall apply to acts occurring on or after said date"; Section 3 is the section that added Article 14.3; and the 1995 enrolled text of 12-14.3-106(1) already required the agency to reinvestigate "ON OR BEFORE THIRTY BUSINESS DAYS AFTER THE DATE THE AGENCY RECEIVES NOTICE CONVEYED BY THE CONSUMER" — word for word what 5-18-110(1) says today.

THE 2022 AND 2023 CONTENT RULES DO NOT GET THAT GRANDFATHER, and this is where the topic is actually exposed. 15 U.S.C. 1681t(b)(1)(E) preempts state law on the subject matter of "section 1681c of this title, relating to information contained in consumer reports, except that this subparagraph shall not apply to any State law in effect on September 30, 1996." Colorado's 1995-vintage obsolescence rules, the seven- and ten-year periods now at 5-18-109(1)(a) through (e), are grandfathered. The ban on sealed records, expunged records, and records that did not result in a conviction at 5-18-109(1)(e.5), together with the 5-18-105 exclusion duty, dates from SB 22-099, effective August 10, 2022; the medical-debt ban at 5-18-109(1)(f) dates from HB 23-1126, effective August 7, 2023. Neither was in effect on September 30, 1996.

THAT THEORY IS IN COURT, BUT ONLY AGAINST THE MEDICAL-DEBT PROVISIONS. ACA International and Creditors Bureau USA v. Fulford, No. 1:25-cv-03530 (D. Colo., filed November 5, 2025), asks the court to strike 5-18-109(1)(f) and 5-16-107(1)(r) as preempted by the FCRA and as a content-based restriction on speech. It does not challenge 5-18-109(1)(e.5) or the 5-18-105 exclusion duty; those two face the same grandfather problem but no pending case tests them. The Fulford case is at the motion-to-dismiss stage — no injunction, temporary restraining order, or merits ruling has issued — so all of these provisions remain in force and citable. The federal regulator's published position runs the other way: the CFPB's interpretive rule "Fair Credit Reporting Act; Preemption of State Laws," 90 FR 48710, addresses FCRA preemption of state credit-reporting laws and is relied on by the challengers. It binds no Colorado court, but it will be cited against these provisions.

THE GRANDFATHER DOES LESS FOR 5-18-117 THAN IT FIRST APPEARS. 5-18-117 keys its liability to violations of "this article 18 or the federal 'Fair Credit Reporting Act', 15 U.S.C. sec. 1681c, as amended," so it touches 1681c subject matter — but the damages structure now in force is not the 1995 text. As enacted, former 12-14.3-108(2) gave a flat five hundred dollars on a sixty-day cure, with no per-entry measure and no creditworthiness qualifier. The $1,000 structure on a thirty-day cure was enacted by SB 97-133, 1997 Colo. Sess. Laws ch. 114, sec. 8, which took effect August 1, 1997 — after September 30, 1996. A defendant can therefore argue that whatever the 1995 grandfather protects, it is not the current damages schedule. This is an open exposure rather than a resolved point, and the current damages schedule should not be described as securely grandfathered.

FURNISHER DUTIES ARE PREEMPTED OUTRIGHT. 15 U.S.C. 1681t(b)(1)(F) preempts state law on the subject matter of "section 1681s-2 of this title, relating to the responsibilities of persons who furnish information to consumer reporting agencies". Its grandfather exceptions are confined to two specifically named state statutes, one Massachusetts and one California; no Colorado statute is among them. That is a second, independent reason a Colorado letter cannot reach a furnisher under Article 18. It is also why the C.R.S. 5-16-107(1)(i) route against a debt collector or collection agency carries unresolved preemption risk of its own: that provision regulates what a collector may communicate to a bureau, which is furnisher-adjacent subject matter, and the question whether 1681t(b)(1)(F) reaches it is contested and unresolved. State that risk neutrally — flag it, do not assume the answer either way.

SECURITY FREEZES ARE PREEMPTED WITH NO GRANDFATHER AT ALL. 15 U.S.C. 1681t(b)(1)(J) covers "subsections (i) and (j) of section 1681c-1 of this title relating to security freezes" and contains no exception clause, so 5-18-112 and 5-18-112.5 are displaced as to nationwide agencies. The displacement is measured by that subject matter: Colorado's freeze provisions retain force as to consumer reporting agencies outside the federal definition of a nationwide agency, so "the Colorado freeze rules are gone" is too broad a statement to publish.

FINALLY, THE GENERAL SAVINGS CLAUSE. 15 U.S.C. 1681t(a) preserves state law "with respect to the collection, distribution, or use of any information on consumers, or for the prevention or mitigation of identity theft, except to the extent that those laws are inconsistent with any provision of this subchapter, and then only to the extent of the inconsistency" — but it is expressly subject to subsections (b) and (c). Courts remain split on the breadth of 1681t preemption generally, and no Colorado appellate decision addresses any of this. The grandfather argument for the timing rules is textually strong and well grounded; the standing of the 2022 and 2023 content rules is genuinely contested.

Statutory damages negligent

Conditional on a failed thirty-day cure: the greater of actual damages or one thousand dollars, on the statute's terms measured PER inaccurate or unblocked entry that affects creditworthiness, plus reasonable attorney fees and costs. The conditional has to travel with the figure.

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The damages and the fee award are both governed by the "if" that closes the sentence, and a quotation stopping before it turns a conditional remedy into an unconditional one. C.R.S. 5-18-117(2)(a) reads: "A consumer reporting agency that negligently violates this article 18 or the federal "Fair Credit Reporting Act", 15 U.S.C. sec. 1681c, as amended, is liable for the greater of actual damages or one thousand dollars for each violation of section 5-18-112 or 5-18-112.5, or for each inaccurate or unblocked entry in the consumer's or protected consumer's file that was disputed or alleged by the consumer, protected consumer, or protected consumer's representative to be unauthorized in accordance with section 5-18-111, that affects the consumer's or protected consumer's creditworthiness, as defined in section 5-18-103 (6), plus reasonable attorney fees and costs if:" — followed by the two thirty-day triggers at (I) and (II). If the bureau corrects the item and sends written notification of the corrective action within thirty days, there is no liability under this subsection at all. Under 5-18-117(2) there is no unconditional one-thousand-dollar entitlement; the only unconditional one-thousand-dollar floor in the article sits on the willful branch at 5-18-117(1), which carries no cure precondition.

WHETHER THE $1,000 IS PER ENTRY OR ONCE IS CONTESTED. On the better reading of the measure clause, the floor applies to each inaccurate or unblocked entry that affects creditworthiness; on the reading a bureau will press, the per-entry measure is confined to security-freeze violations and to identity-theft entries blocked under 5-18-111, and an ordinary tradeline dispute yields actual damages plus fees. No Colorado appellate decision resolves it, and the official annotated Colorado Revised Statutes carry no case construing 5-18-117 or its predecessor, former 12-14.3-108. The statute supplies a measure, not a liquidated sum: a figure produced by multiplying the number of disputed entries by one thousand dollars is not an amount the statute says is owed.

WHERE THE ENTRIES DO NOT AFFECT CREDITWORTHINESS the cap is explicit and aggregate, and it is conditional in exactly the same way. C.R.S. 5-18-117(2)(b) makes the agency liable for the greater of actual damages or one thousand dollars "for all violations of section 5-18-112 or 5-18-112.5 or all inaccurate or unblocked entries in the consumer's or protected consumer's file that were disputed or alleged by the consumer, protected consumer, or protected consumer's representative to be unauthorized in accordance with section 5-18-111, 5-18-112, or 5-18-112.5 and that did not affect the consumer's or protected consumer's creditworthiness, plus reasonable attorney fees and costs if:" — again on the same two thirty-day triggers, repeated at (2)(b)(I) and (II). A single $1,000 for all of them combined, not one per entry.

"CREDITWORTHINESS" IS DEFINED BROADLY, which is what makes the per-entry route usually available on the better reading. C.R.S. 5-18-103(6): "'Creditworthiness' means any entry in a consumer's credit file that impacts the ability of a consumer to obtain and retain credit, employment, business or professional licenses, investment opportunities, or insurance. Entries contained in a consumer file or in a consumer report that affect creditworthiness shall include, but not be limited to, payment information, defaults, judgments, liens, bankruptcies, collections, records of arrest and indictments, and multiple-credit inquiries." Most real disputes — a collection, a late payment, a judgment — fall inside that list.

Statute of limitations detail

Colorado has not set a limitations period for the Colorado Consumer Credit Reporting Act, and no number can be stated here. Article 18 contains no deadline to sue. The phrase "statute of limitations" appears in the article only inside C.R.S.

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5-18-109(1)(b), which bars reporting "Suits and judgments that, from the date of entry, predate the report by more than seven years or by more than the governing statute of limitations, whichever is the longer period" — a rule about how long stale information may be reported, not a filing deadline.

Three candidate periods compete and none is settled. (1) Two years, by borrowing the federal period: C.R.S. 5-18-116(1) authorizes an action "in any court of competent jurisdiction as provided by the federal 'Fair Credit Reporting Act', 15 U.S.C. sec. 1681 et seq., as amended," which arguably incorporates 15 U.S.C. 1681p, under which a claim must be brought by the earlier of 2 years after the plaintiff discovers the violation or 5 years after the violation occurs. (2) Two years under Colorado's residual limitations period, C.R.S. 13-80-102(1)(i), which reaches "All other actions of every kind for which no other period of limitation is provided". (3) One year, the argument a credit bureau will press: C.R.S. 13-80-103(1)(d) sets one year for "All actions for any penalty or forfeiture of any penal statutes", and a bureau will argue that a one-thousand-dollar award granted without proof of actual loss is a penalty.

The two leading readings converge on two years, which makes two years a planning assumption rather than a rule, and no Colorado decision construing 5-18-117 or its predecessor 12-14.3-108 has resolved the question. Because the one-year penalty argument is live and unresolved, a Colorado consumer should act immediately rather than rely on any of these figures, and should not treat any of them as a guaranteed deadline.

ONE PART OF THIS TOPIC DOES HAVE A HARD DEADLINE, AND IT IS SHORT. A claim under the Colorado Fair Debt Collection Practices Act at C.R.S. 5-16-107(1)(i) against a debt collector or collection agency is governed by C.R.S. 5-16-113(5): "A private action to enforce any liability created by this section must be brought in any court of competent jurisdiction within one year from the date on which the violation occurs." One year from the violation, not from discovery — so the date of the false credit communication is the date that matters, and it should be written down before anything else. That claim can expire while the Article 18 limitations question is still theoretical.

Cure window and damages trigger

Thirty CALENDAR days from the bureau's receipt of the dispute. That is the operative deadline for a Colorado demand, and it is a condition on the remedy rather than a free-standing duty. Under C.R.S.

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5-18-117(2)(a)(I), negligent-violation liability attaches only if, "[w]ithin thirty days after receiving notice of dispute from a consumer, protected consumer, or protected consumer's representative in accordance with section 5-18-110, the consumer reporting agency does not: (A) Correct the complained of items or activities; and (B) Send the consumer, protected consumer, or protected consumer's representative and, upon request of the consumer, protected consumer, or protected consumer's representative, any person who has requested the consumer information, written notification of the corrective action, in accordance with section 5-18-110 (6), 5-18-112, or 5-18-112.5". The escape route therefore has two steps, correcting the file and sending written confirmation of the correction, and the agency must complete both: correcting without confirming, or confirming without correcting, leaves it exposed. The drafting history points the same way. HB 18-1233, sec. 7, effective January 1, 2019, amended this section in full, restructuring the trigger into clauses (A) and (B) and striking the second "and does not," where the 1997 text had required both cure steps to fail. Because the clause is still framed in the negative — the agency "does not: (A) ... ; and (B) ..." — a bureau may nevertheless argue that liability requires both steps to have failed; that argument runs against the 2018 amendment, so the correct-and-confirm requirement is the strongly supported reading rather than an open question. A parallel thirty-day trigger appears at 5-18-117(2)(a)(II), where the agency receives a police report alleging, or a certified court order finding, unauthorized activity and fails to block the information in accordance with 5-18-111.

THERE IS NO UNCONDITIONAL $1,000 ANYWHERE IN 5-18-117(2). The same pair of thirty-day triggers is repeated at 5-18-117(2)(b)(I) and (II) for entries that do not affect creditworthiness, and in both subsections the measure clause closes with the word "if:" — so the damages and the fee award alike are governed by the failed cure. Saying that a Colorado bureau owes one thousand dollars for an inaccurate entry, without the failed correct-and-confirm, misstates the statute.

TWO POINTS THAT ARE OFTEN OVERSTATED.

First, the internal clock conflict. 5-18-110(1) gives the agency thirty BUSINESS days to reinvestigate, while 5-18-117(2) attaches damages at thirty CALENDAR days. The damages consequence therefore matures on the shorter, calendar clock even though the reinvestigation window is still open; the reinvestigation itself is not late on day thirty-one.

Second, the per-entry DAMAGES MEASURE is genuinely ambiguous and is not settled. The trigger clause plainly reaches an ordinary 5-18-110 dispute; it says so in terms. The measure clause is the problem. It makes the agency liable for the greater of actual damages or one thousand dollars "for each violation of section 5-18-112 or 5-18-112.5, or for each inaccurate or unblocked entry in the consumer's or protected consumer's file that was disputed or alleged by the consumer, protected consumer, or protected consumer's representative to be unauthorized in accordance with section 5-18-111, that affects the consumer's or protected consumer's creditworthiness". A bureau will argue that "in accordance with section 5-18-111" — the identity-theft block section, which requires proof of identity plus either a police report alleging that another person obtained the consumer's personal identifying information by fraud, theft, or other violation of the Colorado Criminal Code, or a certified court order issued pursuant to section 18-1.3-603 (7) — modifies "disputed" as well as "alleged ... to be unauthorized," confining the per-entry measure to security-freeze violations and identity-theft entries and leaving an ordinary inaccurate tradeline with actual damages plus fees only.

The better reading is that ordinary 5-18-110 disputes are covered, for three reasons in the text itself. (a) The sentence pairs two categories with two qualifiers: an "inaccurate" entry "that was disputed," and an "unblocked" entry "alleged ... to be unauthorized in accordance with section 5-18-111." (b) On the narrow reading, trigger (I) — the 5-18-110 correct-and-confirm failure — would be surplusage, because no measure of damages would ever attach to it. (c) The parallel subsection 5-18-117(2)(b) places "section 5-18-111, 5-18-112, or 5-18-112.5" after the same phrase, and reading that list back onto "disputed" would produce a dispute made in accordance with 5-18-112, a security-freeze section, which is incoherent; the list of sections therefore attaches to "unauthorized," not to "disputed."

That is a reading of the statute, not a holding. No Colorado appellate decision resolves it, and the official annotated Colorado Revised Statutes carry no case construing 5-18-117 or its predecessor, former 12-14.3-108, so the point stands as an argument. The statute fixes a per-entry measure; it does not liquidate a total, and a sum produced by multiplying the number of disputed entries by one thousand dollars is not an amount the statute says is owed.

Prohibited content medical debt

Colorado bars a credit bureau from reporting adverse medical debt at all — a prohibition federal law does not impose — but it carries a sunset, a transaction-size exception, a definitional carve-out, and a live court challenge, and all four must travel with the citation.

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Wherever the prohibition is stated, the pending challenge must be stated in the same passage and given the same weight, not relegated to a footnote.

THE RIGHT. C.R.S. 5-18-109(1) provides that "Except as authorized under subsection (2) of this section, a consumer reporting agency shall not make any consumer report containing any of the following items of information: ... (f) (I) Any adverse item of information that the consumer reporting agency knows or should know concerns medical debt." Two features of that sentence matter. The standard is knowledge or constructive knowledge — "knows or should know" — not strict liability. And the duty runs to the consumer reporting agency, not to the medical provider or the collection agency that furnished the item.

LIMIT 1, SUNSET. C.R.S. 5-18-109(1)(f)(II): "This subsection (1)(f) is repealed, effective July 1, 2028." The ban is not permanent and must never be described as permanent. The companion study provision at 5-18-109(6), which directs the department of revenue to contract for a study of the ban's effects and to report by January 1, 2028, is repealed on the same date, and so is the collector-side misrepresentation rule described below: 5-16-107(1)(r)(II) reads "This subsection (1)(r) is repealed, effective July 1, 2028."

LIMIT 2, TRANSACTION SIZE. C.R.S. 5-18-109(2): "The provisions of subsection (1) of this section do not apply to the case of any consumer report to be used in connection with a credit transaction involving, or that may reasonably be expected to involve, a principal amount that exceeds the national conforming loan limit value for a one-unit property as determined annually by the federal housing finance agency." This switches off the whole of subsection (1) — the medical-debt ban, the sealed and expunged records ban, and the seven- and ten-year obsolescence rules — for large credit transactions. The statute sets no dollar figure of its own: the threshold is the conforming loan limit value FHFA determines each year, so no figure may be hardcoded. FHFA's announcement for 2026 states that "In most of the United States, the 2026 CLL value for one-unit properties will be $832,750". In practice the exception reaches jumbo mortgage underwriting rather than an ordinary card or auto file.

LIMIT 3, WHAT COUNTS AS MEDICAL DEBT. C.R.S. 5-18-103(11.5): "'Medical debt' means debt arising from health-care services, as defined in section 10-16-102 (33), or health-care goods, including products, devices, durable medical equipment, and prescription drugs. 'Medical debt' does not include debt charged to a credit card unless the credit card is issued under an open-end or closed-end credit plan offered specifically for the payment of health-care services or health-care goods." A hospital bill charged to an ordinary general-purpose card is therefore not medical debt for this purpose; a card issued under a plan offered specifically to pay for health-care services or goods is.

LIMIT 4, THE PROVISION IS UNDER CHALLENGE AND IS NOT SETTLED LAW. ACA International and Creditors Bureau USA v. Fulford, No. 1:25-cv-03530 (D. Colo., filed November 5, 2025), asks the court to strike 5-18-109(1)(f) and 5-16-107(1)(r) as preempted by the FCRA and as a content-based restriction on speech. The case is at the motion-to-dismiss stage: no injunction, temporary restraining order, or merits ruling has issued, so the prohibition remains in force and may be cited — but it is contested, and it must not be presented as unassailable. The federal regulator's published position runs the other way: the CFPB's interpretive rule "Fair Credit Reporting Act; Preemption of State Laws," 90 FR 48710, addresses FCRA preemption of state credit-reporting laws and is relied on by the challengers. An interpretive rule is not binding law and no court owes it deference of its own force, but opposing counsel will cite it.

WHAT THE COLLECTOR-SIDE COMPANION ACTUALLY DOES. C.R.S. 5-16-107(1)(r)(I) is not a second ban on reporting medical debt, and treating it as one would put a claim in a collection-agency letter that the statute does not support. It is a false-representation rule inside the Colorado Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. When a debt collector or collection agency is "attempting to collect debt that the debt collector or collection agency knows is medical debt, as defined in section 5-18-103 (11.5), or to obtain information about a consumer in relation to an attempt to collect medical debt," it may not "make a false, deceptive, or misleading representation that the medical debt will be included in a consumer report, as defined in section 5-18-103 (3), or factored into a consumer's credit score, as defined in section 5-18-107 (4), unless the consumer report is to be used in connection with a credit transaction that involves, or that may reasonably be expected to involve, a principal amount that exceeds the national conforming loan limit value for a one-unit property as determined by the federal housing finance authority." So it reaches what a collector SAYS about credit reporting, it bites only where the statement is false, deceptive, or misleading, and it carries its own large-transaction carve-out phrased in its own words.

ONE COLORADO MEDICAL RULE THAT DOES NOT SUNSET. C.R.S. 5-18-109(3) sits outside subsection (1), so neither the July 1, 2028 repeal nor the 5-18-109(2) transaction-size exception touches it: "A consumer reporting agency shall not furnish for employment purposes, or in connection with a credit or insurance transaction or a direct marketing transaction, a consumer report that contains medical information about a consumer unless the consumer consents to the furnishing of the report." That consent rule survives the sunset and survives a jumbo transaction.

HOW TO USE IT. Cite 5-18-109(1)(f) as a Colorado prohibition that is currently in force; do not let it carry a demand on its own; state in the same passage that the provision is the subject of pending litigation and that it is repealed effective July 1, 2028; and do not promise that a medical tradeline must come off.

Reinvestigation deadline detail

Colorado's dispute machinery is mostly a state-law copy of the federal duties, plus two genuinely Colorado-only rights. The distinction is substantive: where Colorado restates a duty federal law already imposes, the state provision adds no obligation the bureau does not already carry.

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WHAT COLORADO COPIES FROM FEDERAL LAW. These provisions still matter, because a failure to meet them is a violation of article 18 and so carries the Colorado remedy in 5-18-117; they are not, however, additional duties. (1) Furnisher notification within five business days. C.R.S. 5-18-110(2): "On or before five business days after the date a consumer reporting agency receives notice of a dispute from a consumer in accordance with subsection (1) of this section, the agency shall provide notice of the dispute to all persons who provided any item of information in dispute." The federal original is 15 U.S.C. 1681i(a)(2)(A): "Before the expiration of the 5-business-day period beginning on the date on which a consumer reporting agency receives notice of a dispute from any consumer or a reseller in accordance with paragraph (1), the agency shall provide notification of the dispute to any person who provided any item of information in dispute, at the address and in the manner established with the person." (2) Written results notice within five business days of completion. C.R.S. 5-18-110(6): "A consumer reporting agency shall provide written notice of the results of any reinvestigation or reinsertion made pursuant to this section within five business days of the completion of the reinvestigation or reinsertion." The federal original is 15 U.S.C. 1681i(a)(6)(A), which requires written notice "not later than 5 business days after the completion of the reinvestigation." The six items the Colorado notice must contain, at 5-18-110(6)(a) to (f) — a statement that the reinvestigation is complete, the agency's determination on completeness or accuracy, a copy of the file or report with a description of the results, notice of the right to a description of the procedure used, notice of the right to add a consumer statement, and notice of the dispute-resolution rights under 5-18-116 — largely track 1681i(a)(6)(B).

Only 5-18-110(6)(f) has no federal counterpart, and it is operative rather than formal. It requires "A notification of the consumer's rights to dispute resolution under section 5-18-116, which are available after the consumer has followed all dispute procedures described in this section and has received the notice specified under this subsection (6)." On the accuracy track, the results notice is therefore both the end of the dispute stage and the document that unlocks the 5-18-116 right to sue or arbitrate. The identity-theft block track under 5-18-111 and the freeze track under 5-18-112 or 5-18-112.5 reach 5-18-116 by their own routes, under 5-18-116(1)(b) and (c), and do not depend on this notice.

GENUINELY COLORADO-ONLY. (1) A right to a live human. 5-18-110(1) requires the agency to "provide the consumer with the option of speaking directly to a representative of the agency to notify the agency of disputed information contained in the consumer's file." There is no federal counterpart. (2) A furnisher correction channel with a five-business-day fix. 5-18-110(8) requires the agency to give a person who provides credit information "the option to speak directly with a representative of the agency or to submit corrections to previously reported information by facsimile or other automated means when inaccurate information that was reported by the credit information provider appears on a consumer's file," and then, "in a period not to exceed five business days from the receipt of the faxed or automated information regarding the corrections, correct the inaccuracies on the consumer's file". Where the furnisher has already reported the correction to the agency, that five-business-day period runs against the agency independently of the reinvestigation clock.

OTHER OPERATIVE DUTIES. Under 5-18-110(4), where the disputed information is inaccurate or cannot be verified after reinvestigation, the agency must promptly delete it from the file, revise the file, provide the consumer and, at the consumer's request, any person who requested the disputed information within the last twelve months with a revised consumer report marked as revised, and refrain from reporting the information in subsequent reports; it must also advise the consumer of that twelve-month notification right. Under 5-18-110(5), "Information deleted pursuant to subsection (4) of this section may not be reinserted in the consumer's file unless the person who furnishes the information reinvestigates and states in writing or by electronic record to the consumer reporting agency that the information is complete and accurate." Under 5-18-110(7), nothing in the section requires a person who obtains a consumer report for resale to alter or correct an inaccuracy in a report that person did not assemble or prepare.

Information block identity theft

C.R.S. 5-18-111(1)(a) requires a consumer reporting agency, "within thirty days after the receipt of a police report or order pursuant to this subsection (1)(a), permanently block the reporting of any information that a consumer identifies on his or her consumer report as being subject to either a police report or a…

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court order referenced in subsection (1)(a)(I) or (1)(a)(II) of this section if the consumer provides a consumer reporting agency with proof of the consumer's identification and a copy of:" either (I) a police report "that alleges that a person other than the consumer obtained or recorded, by means of fraud, theft, or other violation of the "Colorado Criminal Code", personal identifying information of the consumer without authorization from the consumer and that the person used the information to obtain, or attempt to obtain, credit, goods, services, or money in the name of the consumer without the consumer's consent", or (II) "A certified court order issued pursuant to section 18-1.3-603 (7)." The thirty-day clock is conditional: it does not start until proof of identity and one of those two documents are in the agency's hands. The agency must then promptly notify the person who furnished the information "that a police report or court order has been filed, that a block has been requested, and the effective date of the block" (5-18-111(1)(b)).

THIS TRACK HAS ITS OWN ROUTE PAST THE EXHAUSTION GATE. C.R.S. 5-18-116(1)(b) makes completion of "All of the block procedures in section 5-18-111" sufficient, on its own, to unlock a court action or an arbitration. A consumer who has given the bureau proof of identity plus the police report or certified court order does not also have to run a 5-18-110 accuracy dispute and wait for a 5-18-110(6) results notice.

CITE THE FEDERAL DEADLINE, NOT THE COLORADO ONE. 15 U.S.C. 1681c-2(a) requires the block "not later than 4 business days after the date of receipt" — with the federal clock likewise starting only once the agency has all four listed items: appropriate proof of identity, a copy of an identity theft report, the consumer's identification of the information, and a statement by the consumer that the information does not relate to any transaction by the consumer. Colorado's value here is the remedy, not the timeline. Failure to block within thirty days is an express damages trigger under both branches of 5-18-117(2): each attaches liability where, "Within thirty days after receiving a copy of a police report alleging, or a certified court order finding, unauthorized activity, the consumer reporting agency does not block the information in accordance with section 5-18-111." What that liability is worth is governed by 5-18-117 and by the unresolved question whether that section's $1,000 measure runs entry by entry; a letter states the statutory measure, it does not multiply entries into a demanded total.

THE BLOCK IS DEFEASIBLE, AND THE GROUNDS ARE BROAD. C.R.S. 5-18-111(2)(a) lets an agency decline or rescind a block if, "in the exercise of good faith and reasonable judgment," it believes: (I) the information was blocked due to a misrepresentation of fact by the consumer relevant to the block request; (II) the consumer agrees the information was blocked in error; (III) "The consumer knowingly obtained possession of goods, services, or money as a result of the blocked transaction or transactions or the consumer should have known that he or she obtained possession of goods, services, or money as a result of the blocked transaction or transactions"; or (IV) the consumer so requests in writing with proof of identity. Ground (III) is the one that matters in practice and it reaches what the consumer should have known, not only what they knew. Under 5-18-111(2)(b) the agency must decline or rescind where the sentencing court amends, dismisses, or withdraws its 18-1.3-603 (7) order and the consumer provides court documentation and proof of identity. On the consumer's side, 5-18-111(3) requires prompt notice of a declined or rescinded block and provides that "The prior presence of the blocked information in the consumer reporting agency's file on the consumer is not evidence of whether the consumer knew or should have known that he or she obtained possession of any goods, services, or money."

RESELLERS ARE EXEMPT ENTIRELY. C.R.S. 5-18-111(4): the section "does not apply to a consumer reporting agency that acts as a reseller of information by assembling and merging information contained in the data base of one or more other consumer reporting agencies and that does not maintain a data base of the assembled or merged information from which new consumer reports are produced."

WHO IT RUNS AGAINST. Like every other Article 18 duty, 5-18-111 binds a consumer reporting agency, and the claimant must be a consumer as C.R.S. 5-18-103(2) defines that term: "a natural person residing in the state of Colorado". A police report delivered to the original creditor, the collection agency, or the landlord does not trigger this section against them.

Prohibited content criminal records

Colorado bars a bureau from reporting sealed records, expunged records, and records that did not result in a conviction, and separately places an affirmative screening duty on the bureau. Read the clause precisely: it reaches records that were sealed or expunged and records that did not end in a conviction.

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It is not a ban on reporting convictions — an unsealed, unexpunged conviction is governed instead by the seven-year rule in 5-18-109(1)(e), which bars "Records of arrest, indictment, or conviction of a crime that, from the date of disposition, release, or parole, predate the report by more than seven years".

THE PROHIBITION. C.R.S. 5-18-109(1)(e.5) reads in full: "Sealed records, expunged records, and records that did not result in a conviction;". It sits inside the subsection that opens "Except as authorized under subsection (2) of this section, a consumer reporting agency shall not make any consumer report containing any of the following items of information". Unlike its neighbours in that list, it has no time element at all: 5-18-109(1)(a) through (e) and (1)(g) all turn on how old the item is, while (1)(e.5) bars the record however recent it is. It was added by SB 22-099, effective August 10, 2022.

THE AFFIRMATIVE DUTY. C.R.S. 5-18-105, added by the same act: "A consumer reporting agency shall exclude sealed and expunged records from a consumer report, unless the user of the report demonstrates that the user is otherwise required to consider the information pursuant to state or federal statute, rule, or regulation." This is a screening obligation on the bureau, not merely a prohibition triggered by a consumer complaint.

TWO LIMITS THAT TRAVEL WITH IT. First, the 5-18-105 exclusion duty is defeasible by the report USER: it does not apply where the user demonstrates it is otherwise required to consider the information under state or federal statute, rule, or regulation, so a licensing, banking, or childcare screen may lawfully see the record. Note the asymmetry — that carve-out is written into 5-18-105 only; the 5-18-109(1)(e.5) reporting prohibition itself has no user carve-out, and its only exception is the transaction-size rule below. Second, the 5-18-109(2) transaction-size exception switches off all of subsection (1), including (1)(e.5), for a consumer report used in a credit transaction whose principal amount exceeds the FHFA one-unit conforming loan limit value.

PREEMPTION EXPOSURE. Unlike Colorado's 1995-vintage obsolescence rules, 5-18-109(1)(e.5) and the 5-18-105 duty date from 2022 and so fall outside the "State law in effect on September 30, 1996" grandfather in 15 U.S.C. 1681t(b)(1)(E). The same grandfather argument that is being pressed against the medical-debt ban is therefore available against these two provisions — but the pending federal-court challenge does not name them, so their standing under that grandfather is untested rather than contested. Both are in force today.

自己去读原文

官方来源。如果下面某个数字对你的案子有影响,请打开法条自己读一遍 —— 法律会修订,而且很多城市会在州法之上叠加更严的地方条例。

• C.R.S. 5-18-110(1) — reinvestigation deadline (official Colorado General Assembly printout, CRS 2026 Title 5 printout, p. 175)
• C.R.S. 5-18-110(2) — five business days to notify furnishers (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-18-110(6) — five business days to send written results notice (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-18-117(1) — treble damages for willful violations (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-18-117(3) — $1,000/day post-judgment escalator (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-18-116(2) — two-way fee shift in arbitration and 120-day frequency limit (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-18-118 — remedies cumulative, but arbitration bars later suit on the same issue (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-18-103(4) — 'consumer reporting agency' definition, bounding who can be sued (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout, p. 167)
• C.R.S. 5-18-103(6) — 'creditworthiness' definition gating the per-entry multiplier (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-18-106(2)(e) — free annual file disclosure and $8 cap on additional copies (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout, p. 171)
• C.R.S. 5-18-112(2)(a) and 5-18-112(12)(b)-(c) — freeze timing and the $10 lift fee (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout, p. 177-179)
• 1995 Colo. Sess. Laws ch. 143 (SB 95-122), Section 5 — effective date establishing the pre-September 30, 1996 grandfather (official Colorado General Assembly session-law PDF)
• 1995 Colo. Sess. Laws ch. 143 (SB 95-122), Section 3 enacting 12-14.3-106(1) — proves the 'thirty business days' rule existed before September 30, 1996 (official session-law PDF; small caps in original indicate newly enacted text)
• 15 U.S.C. 1681t(b)(1)(B), (E), (F), (J) — FCRA preemption and the September 30, 1996 grandfather (Office of the Law Revision Counsel, uscode.house.gov)
• 15 U.S.C. 1681c-1(i)(2)(A) — federal free security freeze displacing Colorado's freeze rules for nationwide bureaus (uscode.house.gov)
• C.R.S. 13-6-403(1)(a) — $7,500 small claims limit (official Colorado General Assembly printout, CRS 2024 Title 13, p. 145)
• C.R.S. 13-6-407(2)(a)(II) — attorneys generally excluded from Colorado small claims court (official CRS 2024 Title 13 PDF, p. 147)
• C.R.S. 13-80-102(1)(i) — two-year residual limitations period, the leading candidate since Article 18 supplies none (official CRS 2024 Title 13 PDF)
• C.R.S. 13-80-103(1)(d) — one-year penalty limitations period, the adverse argument a bureau will raise (official CRS 2024 Title 13 PDF, p. 611)
• FindLaw mirror of C.R.S. 5-18-117 (marked 'Current as of January 01, 2025') — second independent verbatim cross-check of the damages schedule
• C.R.S. 5-18-109, Source note — the amending acts the original row omitted (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-18-105 — affirmative duty to exclude sealed and expunged records, with the user carve-out (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout, p. 302)
• C.R.S. 5-18-103(11.5) — 'medical debt' definition and the ordinary-credit-card carve-out (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout, p. 300)
• C.R.S. 5-18-103(2) — residency limit on every Article 18 right (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout, p. 299)
• C.R.S. 5-18-110(3) — frivolous-or-irrelevant termination, a defeasibility hook on the reinvestigation duty (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout, p. 310)
• C.R.S. 5-18-110(8) — Colorado-only furnisher correction channel with a five-business-day fix (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout, p. 311)
• C.R.S. 5-18-111(2)(a) and (4) — grounds to decline or rescind an identity-theft block, and the reseller exemption (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout, pp. 312-313)
• C.R.S. 5-18-117(2)(a) — the FULL negligent-damages sentence including the trailing 'if:' that conditions the whole award, plus trigger (I)(B)'s cross-reference (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout, pp. 324-325). The original row's quote ended at 'costs.' with a period, which detached the damages and fee award from their condition.
• C.R.S. 5-16-107(1)(i) and (1)(r) — Colorado FDCPA ban on communicating false credit information, and the medical-debt misrepresentation ban with its own 2028 sunset (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout, pp. 249-251)
• C.R.S. 5-16-103(3)(b)(I) and (9) — the definitions that keep 5-16-107 off original creditors (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout, pp. 240-241)
• C.R.S. 5-16-113(1), (2), (4), (5), (7) — Colorado FDCPA remedy, loser-pays, bona fide error defense, one-year limitations period, and the no-double-recovery bar (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout, pp. 261-262)
• C.R.S. 5-16-114 — the Colorado FDCPA IS administratively enforced, unlike Article 18 (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout, p. 262)
• 15 U.S.C. 1681i(a)(1) — the 30-day federal reinvestigation clock and the 15-day extension the original row omitted, quoted from subparagraphs (A), (B) and (C) in order; the bracketed subparagraph markers are editorial, and the headings 'In general', 'Extension of period to reinvestigate' and 'Limitations on extension of period to reinvestigate' are omitted (Office of the Law Revision Counsel, uscode.house.gov)
• 15 U.S.C. 1681i(a)(2)(A), (a)(3)(A), (a)(6)(A) — the federal originals of Colorado's 5-18-110(2) and (6) duties, and the federal frivolous-dispute out (uscode.house.gov)
• 15 U.S.C. 1681c-2(a) — federal four-business-day identity-theft block, and the four items that start the clock (uscode.house.gov)
• 15 U.S.C. 1681n(a) — the federal willful-violation remedy, showing punitive damages are discretionary but uncapped (corrects the row's 'no cap unlike federal' claim) (uscode.house.gov)
• 15 U.S.C. 1681p — the federal limitations period that 5-18-116(1)'s FCRA reference arguably borrows (uscode.house.gov)
• 1995 Colo. Sess. Laws ch. 143 (SB 95-122), Section 3 enacting 12-14.3-108(2) — proves the damages schedule is NOT 1995 vintage: $500 flat on a sixty-day cure (official Colorado General Assembly session-law PDF; small caps in original indicate newly enacted text)
• ACA International and Creditors Bureau USA v. Fulford, No. 1:25-cv-03530 (D. Colo., filed Nov. 5, 2025) — pending FCRA-preemption and First Amendment challenge to 5-18-109(1)(f) and 5-16-107(1)(r). Docket status per the Georgetown Health Care Litigation Tracker, checked 2026-09-04: motion-to-dismiss briefing ongoing (defendants' reply Aug. 28, 2026); no injunction, TRO, or merits ruling.
• CFPB interpretive rule, 'Fair Credit Reporting Act; Preemption of State Laws,' 90 FR 48710 (Oct. 28, 2025) — the federal regulator's published position that the FCRA broadly preempts state credit-reporting content rules, withdrawing the narrower 2022 interpretive rule. Not binding law; cited by the challengers.
• FHFA, 'FHFA Announces Conforming Loan Limit Values for 2026' (Nov. 25, 2025) — the annually-set figure that switches off all of C.R.S. 5-18-109(1). Do not hardcode it in a letter template; it changes every year.
• FindLaw mirror of C.R.S. 5-18-109 — independent verbatim cross-check of the medical-debt ban, its sunset, and the sealed/expunged ban
• Colorado OLLS, 2026 CRS titles download page — establishes that crs2026-title-05.pdf is the current official printout (supersedes the CRS 2024 file the original row relied on)
• SB 97-133, 1997 Colo. Sess. Laws ch. 114, secs. 8-9 (enacted the $1,000-per-entry / thirty-day damages structure)
• CRS 2016 Title 12 printout (former 12-14.3-108(2)(a) already carries the $1,000-per-entry / thirty-day structure)
• Enrolled HB 18-1233, sec. 7 (amended 5-18-117: protected-consumer language; cure trigger restructured into clauses (A) and (B); damages structure retained) — CRS 2026 source note
• C.R.S. 5-18-117(2)(b) — the FULL non-creditworthiness damages sentence, including the trailing 'if:' and both thirty-day triggers at (I)(A)-(B) and (II) (official Colorado OLLS printout, CRS 2026 Title 5, pp. 324-325). Replaces the earlier 5-18-117(2)(b) row, whose quote stopped at 'plus reasonable attorney fees and costs' and thereby detached the aggregate $1,000 from the failed-cure condition. Paragraph breaks and page furniture in the PDF extraction are rendered as single spaces; no words are omitted.
• C.R.S. 5-18-110(6)(f) — the one item of the Colorado results notice with no federal counterpart, and the provision that ties the 5-18-116 suit and arbitration rights to completion of the dispute procedures plus receipt of this notice (official Colorado OLLS printout, CRS 2026 Title 5, p. 311)
• C.R.S. 5-18-110(5) — deleted information may not be reinserted without a written or electronic furnisher certification (official Colorado OLLS printout, CRS 2026 Title 5, p. 310)
• C.R.S. 5-18-116(1)(a), (b), (c) — the three parallel exhaustion tracks: the accuracy track requires both the 5-18-110 dispute procedures and receipt of the 5-18-110(6) notice, while the block and freeze tracks stand on their own (official Colorado OLLS printout, CRS 2026 Title 5, p. 323)
• C.R.S. 5-18-117, Source note — the amending act behind the current cure trigger: HB 18-1233, sec. 7, amended the section in its entirety effective January 1, 2019, the amendment that restructured the trigger into clauses (A) and (B) (official Colorado OLLS printout, CRS 2026 Title 5, p. 325; the section symbol appears as a replacement character in the PDF text extraction)
• C.R.S. 5-18-116(1) — private right of action, arbitration alternative, and the THREE alternative exhaustion tracks quoted in full through clauses (a), (b) and (c) (official Colorado OLLS printout, CRS 2026 Title 5, p. 323). Supersedes the earlier quote of this subsection, which stopped after clause (a) and thereby made a three-track 'as applicable' prerequisite read as a single mandatory path.
• C.R.S. 5-18-110(6)(f) — the results notice must itself tell the consumer that the 5-18-116 remedies open only after the dispute procedures are complete AND the notice has been received; independent confirmation of the two-condition accuracy track (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout, p. 311)
• C.R.S. 5-18-116(3) — post-arbitration enforcement: blocking, removal or striking 'in a timely manner', a five-day freeze deadline, and an immediate action against a noncomplying agency notwithstanding the 120-day waiting period (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout, p. 324)
• C.R.S. 5-18-111(1)(a) — the FULL thirty-day identity-theft block sentence including the conditional 'if the consumer provides ... proof of the consumer's identification and a copy of' and both qualifying documents at (I) and (II) (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout, p. 312). The earlier quote of this paragraph stopped before the conditional, which made an unconditional thirty-day duty out of a duty that does not start until the documents are received.
• C.R.S. 5-18-117(2)(a)(II) — the identity-theft damages trigger: failure to block within thirty days of a police report or certified court order (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout, p. 325). The identical trigger is repeated verbatim at 5-18-117(2)(b)(II).
• C.R.S. 5-16-103(3)(a) — the affirmative 'collection agency' definition that decides which recipients the Colorado FDCPA route can reach (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout, pp. 240-241)
• C.R.S. 5-16-103(3)(c) — a creditor collecting its own debt under a name suggesting a third party IS a collection agency; the express inclusion that stops recipient routing from turning on the 'original creditor' label alone (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout, p. 242)
• C.R.S. 5-16-103(8.5) — debt buyers are deemed collection agencies, so a debt buyer furnishing in its own name as current creditor is still reachable under 5-16-107(1)(i) (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout, p. 244)
• C.R.S. 5-16-107(1)(i) — the Colorado FDCPA false-credit-information ban, quoted as a single contiguous clause (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout, p. 250). The governing introductory clause of 5-16-107(1) is quoted separately in this row's 5-16-107(1)(i) and (1)(r) citation.
• C.R.S. 5-18-103(13.5) — 'protected consumer' definition: under sixteen OR represented by a representative (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout, p. 301)
• C.R.S. 5-18-103(13.9) — 'representative' definition; clause (b), the legal-guardian branch, carries no age limit, so 'protected consumer' is not a synonym for 'minor' (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout, p. 301)
• C.R.S. 5-18-115(1)(a)-(b) and (2)(a) — pure-reseller exemption from the freeze sections, the duty to honor another agency's freeze, and the opening of the check-service/fraud-prevention exemption list (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout, p. 322)
• FindLaw mirror of C.R.S. 5-18-116 — second independent verbatim cross-check of the private right of action and the arbitration alternative. Replaces the row that labelled this same quote a cross-check of the exhaustion prerequisite: the quote stops at "binding arbitration" and never reaches clauses (a), (b) and (c), so it cannot verify the prerequisite. The three tracks are verified from the official OLLS printout instead.
• C.R.S. 5-18-109(1) — the full prohibited-content list, quoted continuously from the introductory clause through (1)(f)(I), with no splice (official Colorado OLLS printout, CRS 2026 Title 5)
• C.R.S. 5-18-109(1)(f)(II), (1)(g), (2) — the July 1, 2028 repeal of the medical-debt ban, the seven-year catch-all, and the conforming-loan-limit exception that switches off all of subsection (1), quoted continuously (official Colorado OLLS printout, CRS 2026 Title 5)
• C.R.S. 5-18-109(3) — the medical-information consent rule, which sits outside subsection (1) and is therefore untouched by both the July 1, 2028 repeal and the conforming-loan-limit exception (official Colorado OLLS printout, CRS 2026 Title 5)
• C.R.S. 5-18-109(6) — the department of revenue study on the medical-debt ban, repealed on the same July 1, 2028 date as the ban itself (official Colorado OLLS printout, CRS 2026 Title 5)
• C.R.S. 5-16-107(1)(r) — the collector-side medical-debt MISREPRESENTATION ban (not a second reporting ban), its own conforming-loan-limit carve-out, and its identical July 1, 2028 repeal, quoted continuously without ellipsis (official Colorado OLLS printout, CRS 2026 Title 5)
• C.R.S. 5-18-109, Source note — the amending acts fixing the 2022 and 2023 vintages of the sealed/expunged and medical-debt rules, which is what puts them outside the September 30, 1996 FCRA grandfather (official Colorado OLLS printout, CRS 2026 Title 5)
• C.R.S. 5-18-101 — short title of the Act (official Colorado OLLS printout, CRS 2026 Title 5; the section body was not captured by this round's pdftotext extraction — this text comes from the source pack's header note and is pending re-extraction of the 5-18-101 page)
• C.R.S. 5-18-109(1)(b) — the only place in Article 18 where "statute of limitations" appears, and it is a reporting-duration rule rather than a deadline to sue (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-16-103(1) — who the "administrator" enforcing the Colorado FDCPA actually is, and where the office sits (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-16-114 — the Colorado FDCPA is administratively enforced by the administrator, in contrast to Article 18 (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-18-106(2)(a) — proactive first-class-mail notice of a free file copy after eight inquiries or a new negative item (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-18-106(2)(b) — only one triggering letter per twelve-month period however many events occur (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-18-106(2)(d) — the letter may be a form letter but must state the number and type of triggering events and carry a request form (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-18-108(1)(d) — no charge for the first annual disclosure copy, cross-referenced to the 5-18-106(2)(a) notification rather than to the general annual right at (2)(e) (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-18-108(1)(a) — no charge for a file copy requested within sixty days after adverse action (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-18-108(2) — the charge permitted for all other disclosures (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-18-112(1)(a) — Colorado requires a security-freeze request to be made in writing by certified mail (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-18-112(2)(a) — five business days to place a freeze (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-18-112(2)(b) — ten business days to send written confirmation of the freeze; the sentence continues past a page break in the official printout, so the quote stops at the page boundary rather than splicing across it (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-18-112(4) — three business days to comply with a temporary-lift request (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-18-112(9) — a freeze stays in place until the consumer asks for removal, and the agency then has three business days, with the subsection (6)(b) exception intact (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-18-112(12)(d) — the twelve-dollar fee Colorado permits for a temporary lift for a specific party, with its opening exception intact (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-18-115(1)(a) and (1)(b) — pure resellers without a permanent database are exempt from 5-18-112 to 5-18-114 except as specified in (1)(b), and every agency must honor another agency's freeze (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-18-115(2) introductory portion and (2)(a) — check service and fraud prevention companies are not required to place a freeze (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-18-115(2)(b) and (2)(c) — deposit account information services and fraud prevention companies are likewise not required to place a freeze (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-18-103(13.5) — "protected consumer" is defined as under sixteen years of age, or represented by a representative; it is not a general minors provision (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-18-103(13.9) — "representative" reaches only the parent of a child under sixteen, or a guardian qualified by trusteeship, power of attorney, or court appointment; the parent of a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old is not one (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-18-112.5(10) — no fee to place, temporarily lift, or permanently remove a freeze on the report or record of any consumer under eighteen (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-16-103(8.5) — debt buyers are collection agencies for the purposes of article 16 (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)
• C.R.S. 5-16-103(3)(c) — a creditor collecting its own debts under a name suggesting a third-party collector is itself a collection agency (official CRS 2026 Title 5 printout)

最近核实: 2026-09-07