On Nov. 3, Colorado voters get a crack at an important question the federal system has not settled regarding energy in the state. Amendment 82 would make buying and selling natural gas for homes and businesses a constitutional right. As a reminder, it needs 55% to pass. 

What the measure does

The text is two sentences. Consumers would have “the right to purchase natural gas for cooking or heating in homes or businesses throughout the state,” and distributors and utilities would have “the right to sell natural gas for homes or businesses.”

That’s it. Something as significant as an amendment provides a simple right. It does not, however,  mandate gas service, subsidize it, or stop anyone from building all-electric. Because it amends the constitution instead of the statutes, it clears only with a supermajority, and neither a future legislature nor a Public Utilities Commission docket can undo it.

Why Colorado, and why now

Colorado is targeting a 50% cut in greenhouse gas emissions below 2005 levels by 2030 and net zero by 2050. Under SB21-264, gas utilities must file clean heat plans cutting emissions 22% by 2030, and one of the levers available to them is selling less natural gas. The state’s new model building code, adopted in 2025, is built to steer new homes toward all-electric. 

The effect is a patchwork. What a Colorado household or restaurant can install depends on the municipal line it sits inside, and on what the rules look like whenever the next code cycle lands. Advance Colorado’s argument is that access erodes gradually rather than disappearing in a single ban. The group’s executive vice president, Kristi Burton Brown, said that the pressure comes through Public Utilities Commission rules and legislation, not an outright prohibition.

Opponents, including the Colorado Municipal League and more than 20 other organizations, argue that a constitutional carve-out is the wrong tool for an energy question that keeps changing. Supporters answer that the changing part is the problem, since a protection a city council can route around in the next round of rules is not much of a protection.

Washington still hasn’t answered the question

The Energy Policy and Conservation Act preempts state and local rules “concerning the energy efficiency, energy use, or water use” of covered appliances. The Ninth Circuit applied it against Berkeley’s gas-piping ban in 2023 and reaffirmed on rehearing in 2024.. In June 2026 the Second Circuit upheld New York’s All-Electric Buildings Act, and the Congressional Research Service logged the result as a circuit split. Federal law now blocks a municipal gas ban in Berkeley and permits one in Buffalo.

Congress has had two chances at it. Rep. Nick Langworthy’s Energy Choice Act (H.R. 3699) cleared committee in December of 2025 and has not reached the House floor. Senate Energy Chairman Mike Lee’s Energy Efficiency Reform Act of 2026 (S. 5338) is still in committee. Neither is close to a floor vote.

The states stopped waiting

More than two dozen states have enacted laws blocking local governments from banning natural gas connections, according to E&E News. They are not all one party. Maine’s prohibition on towns banning heating fuel sources was sponsored by legislators from both parties and signed by Democratic Gov. Janet Mills in July 2025. States that moved first on electrification have been adjusting too, with California freezing local reach codes for six years and Vermont setting aside its clean heat standard.

Every one of those protections is a statute, which lasts until the next legislature says otherwise. Colorado is the first state to put the constitutional version to voters, six years after a similar measure was withdrawn in a deal with the governor.

Bottom line

Colorado voters are now considering whether to codify the right to purchase and sell natural gas directly in their state constitution. The 55% threshold makes it a real contest, and the outcome matters past the state line either way. If it passes, the next fight is in court over how a constitutional right squares with clean heat plans and local building codes, and the states without a protection get a template that outlasts an election. If it fails, the statutes already on the books remain the model, and the circuit split still has no resolution on the calendar.