Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

There have been some interesting scenarios tossed out here, thank you for the mental exercise Gents. There seems to be some fuzziness between discrimination that is prohibited based on employment and based on contract work. I haven't spent a lot of time researching this, and I'm certainly no lawyer, but here's what I've found so far.

home.ubalt.edu/shapiro/rights_course/Chapter8text.htm

VIII. PROHIBITING PRIVATE DISCRIMINATION

As we have seen in an earlier chapter, the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits most discrimination on the basis of race and gender (and also alienage and national origin), but only when practiced by the government. The Supreme Court held in The Civil Rights Cases in 1883, that Congress did not have the power under the Fourteenth Amendment to prohibit discrimination practiced by private parties. Similarly, it would be illegal for a state to discriminate on the basis of a person’s religious belief, but this prohibition under the First Amendment (which was made applicable to the states under the Fourteenth Amendment), would not apply to private conduct.

Therefore, as late as 1960, an employer could refuse to hire a woman, a restaurant owner could refuse service to a black person, and a landlord could refuse to rent an apartment to a Jewish person. Although individual states were free, using their general police power, to prohibit these kinds of discrimination, very few had done so. Starting in the 1960’s, however, Congress has been able to prohibit many forms of private discrimination using its power under other sections of the Constitution.

The three main sources of power that Congress has used to this effect have been: its power under the Thirteenth Amendment (which prohibited slavery), its power over the federal purse, and its power to regulate interstate commerce. Congress’s powers under each of these sections is different, both in terms of who may be prohibited from discriminating and also what kind of discrimination may be prohibited. Some of the statutes passed by Congress under each of these powers have overlapped, so that certain conduct is controlled by several different statutes. There are also certain kinds of private discrimination which Congress either may not constitutionally reach, or has chosen not to. The next sections will examine the coverage of various statutes passed under each of these powers.

Minnesota has a Contract-Based Discrimination Law in place, I can't find if Colorado or any other state has something similar.
Contract-Based Discrimination for *Some* Independent Contractors Under the MHRA
By Grant T. Collins on July 1, 2010

We all know that the Minnesota Human Rights Act prohibits employment discrimination. However, a little-known provision in that law also bans contract-based discrimination, which makes it illegal for a person engaged in a trade or business:

… to intentionally refuse to do business with, to refuse to contract with, or to discriminate in the basic terms, conditions, or performance of the contract because of a person’s race, national origin, color, sex, sexual orientation, or disability, unless the alleged refusal or discrimination is because of a legitimate business purpose.