Court Cases

On January 8, 2004, the ACLU filed this lawsuit and asked for an emergency order to stop Weld County law enforcement authorities from pursuing a criminal investigation and prosecution of Thomas Mink, the publisher of The Howling Pig, an Internet-based publication that features satiric commentary on issues of public concern to the University of Northern Colorado (UNC) community.

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.

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.

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.