Court Cases

This case alleges that Denver police targeted plaintiff Jose Sanchez unjustifiably while he was standing lawfully on the public sidewalk outside the home of his girlfriend, plaintiff Joshinna Carreras.

After months of collaboration and negotiation with ACLU lawyers, the Colorado Department of Corrections agreed to end the use of punitive restraints on non-violent, compliant inmates. These restraints include not only hand and ankle cuffs, but also torso and between-the-legs chains that severely restrict a prisoner’s movement.

This lawsuit challenges a new policy of the Boulder County Jail that forbids prisoners to send letters and instead restricts their outgoing correspondence to postcards supplied by the jail. The only exceptions are correspondence that fits the jail’s category of “legal mail” or “official mail.”

This lawsuit focuses on events of the evening of August 25, 2008, during the Democratic National Convention. During the early evening hours of the first day of the DNC, a solid line of riot-equipped police shut down a protest march as it proceeded on 15th Street and the adjoining sidewalks in downtown Denver. A second line of police quickly closed in from behind, confining hundreds of persons in a one-block stretch of 15th Street between Court and Cleveland.

This suit, filed on behalf of Colorado resident Luis Quezada, asserts that Jefferson County Sheriff Ted Mink illegally imprisoned the ACLU’s client for 47 days in 2009 simply because federal immigration authorities suspected that Mr. Quezada was here in violation of federal immigration laws.

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.