Colorado has a law that says you can't ask a job applicant for anything that gives away their age on the initial application. No graduation dates. No birthdate. It's called the Job Application Fairness Act, and it's aimed at one thing: keeping older workers from getting screened out before anyone even looks at their resume.
I want to flag something up front, because I've seen people mix this up. This isn't the same Colorado law I wrote about in the piece on lookback rules, the one that caps how far back a background check can report a conviction.
That's a different statute doing a different job. This one isn't about criminal history at all. It's about age.
Age discrimination in hiring is quiet. Nobody puts "too old" in a rejection email. It shows up earlier than that, in what gets asked before a person's actual qualifications are even reviewed.
Think about a standard application form. It asks for your graduation year. Two candidates with the same resume, same experience, same skills. One graduated in 2001, one in 2019. A hiring manager glancing at both now has an age estimate before reading a single line about the job itself.
Colorado's law tries to close that gap. Keep the age-revealing details off the first form, and a candidate gets judged on their actual work history first. That's the theory, and I think it's a reasonable one.
The core idea is simple: nothing on that initial application should let you figure out how old someone is. In practice, that generally means:
I'll be straight with you on this part. I've seen slightly different lists of exactly what counts, depending on the source. I don't want to hand you a field-by-field list as gospel when I'm not fully certain every item on it is right.
The graduation-date restriction is the one I see repeated most consistently, so I'd treat that as close to certain. Confirm the rest against the current statute or your screening provider before you rebuild your application form around it.
Same goes for exactly when this took effect. I believe it's already in force as of this writing, but check the current effective date yourself before you assume your application form is compliant. That part's easy to get wrong.
This law only covers the initial application. It doesn't ban asking about age forever, and it doesn't stop a candidate from bringing it up themselves.
A candidate can still choose to list their graduation year on a resume. That's their call, not yours to require.
But once you're further into hiring, things change. Verifying someone's actual age for a legitimate reason, say, a job with a legal minimum age, is a different situation than fishing for it on page one of an application.
So to say that a different way: the rule is about what you require up front, not about age being off-limits as a topic forever.
This is the second Colorado law I've covered that restricts what goes on an application. Colorado runs a few of these side by side, each covering a different piece of the form.
| Law | What it restricts | When it applies |
|---|---|---|
| Job Application Fairness Act | Age-indicating information, like birthdate or graduation dates | On the initial application |
| Chance to Compete Act | Asking about criminal history | Generally not until after a conditional offer |
| Equal Pay for Equal Work Act | Asking for salary history | Throughout the hiring process, plus a pay range disclosure requirement |
That's the general shape of the other two, not a full breakdown. Each deserves its own read before you build a policy around it.
The pattern across all three is the same, though. Colorado keeps trying to strip out information that can bias an early hiring decision, before the candidate's actual qualifications get a fair look.
Pull up your current job application and read it the way a candidate would. If there's a field asking for a graduation date or a birthdate, that's the one to fix first.
You can still verify age later for a legitimate reason. A candidate can still volunteer a graduation year on their resume. What you can't do is require it on that first form. That part's not optional, and it's a cheap fix once you know to look for it.
Can I still ask a candidate's age after I hire them? Verifying age for a legitimate, job-related reason later in the process is a different situation than requiring it on the initial application. That's what this law targets.
Does this apply to every employer in Colorado? I don't want to give you a firm size cutoff I'm not certain of. Check the current statute or your screening provider for exactly who's covered.
Is this the same law as Colorado's seven-year lookback rule? No. That one governs how far back a background check can report a criminal record. This one governs what your job application can ask before you've even run a check.
This piece is about one narrow rule: what your initial application can't ask. It's not a full guide to hiring in Colorado. The Chance to Compete Act and the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act each deserve their own careful read, not a paragraph borrowed from mine.
If you're building an actual hiring policy, get the specifics confirmed by someone who tracks Colorado employment law for a living. That's worth the call.