Court Cases

ACLU of Colorado and three private attorneys filed a class action lawsuit against the El Paso County Sheriff about the conditions inside the El Paso County Jail during the COVID-19 outbreak.

In this class action lawsuit, the ACLU of Colorado contends that El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder violates Colorado law by refusing to release prisoners who have posted bond, completed their sentence, or otherwise resolved their criminal case at the request of federal immigration officials.

In a groundbreaking ruling issued in 2017, federal district judge Richard Matsch declared that the Colorado statute requiring lifetime sex offender registry imposed cruel and unusual punishment on three convicted sex offenders whose cases the court heard in a bench trial. The civil rights case was litigated in the trial court by attorney Colorado attorney Alison Ruttenberg.

ACLU of Colorado filed a class action lawsuit against Governor Polis and the Department of Corrections seeking an emergency order to compel the DOC to protect medically vulnerable incarcerated people from COVID-19.

The ACLU of Colorado sought an emergency order to protect high-risk people in jail from contracting COVID-19.

The Office of the Colorado State Public Defender, Colorado Criminal Defense Bar and the Office of Alternate Defense Counsel filed two emergency petitions today asking the Colorado Supreme Court to take immediate action to limit the spread of COVID-19 in Colorado jails by issuing a directive that lower courts are to do their part to safely reduce the number of people who are incarcerated during this crisis.

This lawsuit, filed on behalf of immigration attorney Jennifer Smith, challenges what ICE describes as its “practice” of denying access to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) process when the agency regards the attorney’s client as a “fugitive.”

In this lawsuit, the children of Kamyar Samimi seek to hold the Geo Group accountable for the wrongful death of their father. Mr. Samimi, a Legal Permanent Resident, died in December 2017, after two weeks in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody at the Aurora Contract Detention Facility (ACDF), a for-profit detention center operated by GEO. The ACLU of Colorado’s investigation, which required a lawsuit to force ICE to release records under the Freedom of Information Act, revealed a gut-wrenching picture of his final days and reflected the inhumane conditions and lack of adequate medical care at ACDF.

This lawsuit challenges a Greeley ordinance that bans all pedestrian presence in all medians throughout the city.