Court Cases

This class action, filed July 19, 2006, alleges that prisoners in the Garfield County Jail in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, are subjected to a pervasive pattern of disproportionate and excessive force carried out by deputies’ misuse and abuse of pepperball guns, restraint chairs, tasers, electroshock belts, and pepper spray. The jail has no written policies that limit deputies’ use of the first four of these devices, and the suit alleges that the one-page policy on pepper spray is insufficient as written and widely violated in practice.

Homeless persons in Boulder are at risk of being prosecuted under a city ordinance that prohibits “camping.”

This class-action lawsuit challenges a new policy of the El Paso County Jail (effective August 2, 2010) that bans prisoners from sending letters and instead restricts their outgoing correspondence (other than "legal mail") to 4" X 6" postcards supplied by the jail.

Thanks to a letter from the ACLU, a Greeley high school student will be permitted to start a Gay-Straight Alliance at his school, despite officials’ initial reluctance.

In a letter to school administrators sent yesterday, the ACLU demanded that Falcon High School rescind its prohibition against a student wearing a t-shirt that reads: “marriage is so gay.”

In this legal action, ACLU lawyers accuse officers of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of engaging in racial and ethnic stereotyping. They carried out an immigration roundup that violated the Fourth Amendment rights of dozens of Denver-area Spanish-speaking residents and resulted in the illegal arrest and illegal search of United States citizens and legal immigrants who had done absolutely nothing wrong.

Today the ACLU of Colorado asked the Denver Police Department's Internal Affairs Bureau to re-open its investigation into two African-American citizens’ complaints of racial profiling arising from a traffic stop on February 13, 2009.

The ACLU and ACLU of Colorado called upon the Colorado Department of Corrections to abandon a new policy that subjects prisoners to degrading body cavity searches.