DENVER – In response to a letter from the ACLU of Colorado, DISH Network has agreed to make several improvements on their accommodations for nursing mothers.

On March 12, the ACLU of Colorado sent a letter of complaint to DISH Network documenting multiple failures to accommodate nursing mothers at DISH Network’s corporate headquarters in Englewood, where employees are forced to pump breast milk in front of their co-workers and supervisors without privacy screens or curtains, and at a DISH Network call center in Littleton, where the lactation room is located inside a bathroom in direct violation of federal and state law.

Late in the afternoon of Friday March 21, the ACLU received a response from DISH Network promising new accommodations for nursing employees.

“DISH is to be commended for promptly committing to address the problems outlined in our letter and for taking significant strides to protect the rights of nursing mothers in the workplace,” said ACLU of Colorado staff attorney Rebecca Wallace.

They have promised to provide multiple private places for several nursing mothers to express milk simultaneously in the Englewood office as well as the relocation of the lactation room in the Littleton office out of the bathroom. They have also indicated they are “undertaking a company-wide assessment of the accommodations provided to nursing mothers,” and have identified a human resources manager whose duty it is to ensure compliance with laws regarding nursing employees. DISH’s letter emphasized the company’s commitment to providing a healthy, safe and family-friendly workplace.

“By bringing the story of nursing employees at DISH to light and enforcing state and federal laws protecting nursing mothers in the workplace, the ACLU hopes to change the old-fashioned view held by some employers that a model employee is one that does not get pregnant, does not give birth, does not breast feed, and does not have child-care responsibilities,” added Wallace. “DISH’s steps in promptly resolving the complaints raised in our letter serves as a model to other employers.”

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BOULDER - “The ACLU of Colorado is disappointed that the City of Boulder has decided to add its name to the long and growing list of municipalities around the state that have responded to poverty on their streets and in their public spaces by increasing surveillance, adding new criminal penalties, and giving more tools to police and municipal judges to push homeless and poor people out of their communities.
“Two years ago, in a letter supporting the Boulder City Council’s decision to eliminate jail time for a number of minor offenses, many of which are unevenly enforced against the homeless and poor, the ACLU of Colorado Boulder County chapter wrote that ‘Incarceration is an extreme violation of liberty and should be reserved for the most serious violations and violators.’ At the time, the Council agreed.
“Now, just two years later, the Council has reversed that decision and plans to use the new ordinances to ‘take back public spaces’ by pushing disfavored members of the public out of them. Pushing the homeless out of one location only increases the problem of homelessness in other locations. Rather than spending public resources on more aggressive law enforcement, harassment, and incarceration, communities like Boulder would be better served by focusing that funding on programs that actually address and help to solve root causes of poverty.”

DENVER – The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado filed suit this morning challenging an anti-panhandling ordinance recently approved by the City of Grand Junction.  According to the ACLU complaint, the ordinance bans a wide swath of speech that is protected by the First Amendment.

Although Grand Junction officials have claimed that the ordinance aims only at “aggressive” panhandling, the ACLU contends that most of the provisions are written so broadly that they also apply to peaceful, non-intrusive requests for assistance, such as a person sitting silently with a sign seeking a donation.

The law prohibits all panhandling after sunset and in any of a dozen additional locations and situations specified in the ordinance, such as within 100 feet of a bus stop or a school.

The ACLU lawsuit, which seeks to stop enforcement of the ordinance before it goes into effect on Sunday, March 23, was filed on behalf of five individuals, including a street performer and a former member of the US Coast Guard, as well as Humanists Doing Good, a local nonprofit organization.   All engage in peaceful expression that the new ordinance has unjustifiably made a crime punishable by up to one year in jail, according to the ACLU.

Among the speech banned by the ordinance is any solicitation of a person defined as “at risk,” a category that broadly includes all persons over 70 and all persons with mental or physical disabilities.

“The only conceivable reason for banning polite, non-intimidating solicitation of older and disabled persons is a mistaken and stigmatizing view that they cannot make their own decisions with their money,” said Silverstein.

According to the lawsuit, the city’s true goal is not to target aggressive panhandling but to provide police with a tool they can use to tell homeless persons and poor panhandlers to move on and to reduce the presence of impoverished beggars in Grand Junction.

“Although the ordinance technically applies to Girl Scouts selling cookies, Salvation Army bell ringers, street musicians seeking donations, petition circulators gathering signatures, and commercial vendors, the true targets of this measure are homeless and poor persons asking for financial assistance, even when they do so in a polite, courteous, and nonthreatening manner,” said Mark Silverstein, ACLU Legal Director.

The ACLU of Colorado has a long history of opposing laws that target the homeless and limit speech protected by the First Amendment, including a successful challenge in late 2012 of a sweeping ordinance that designated 12 blocks of Colorado Springs as a “no-solicitation” zone.  The ordinance was repealed after a federal judge’s preliminary ruling found that it was “likely unconstitutional.”

Today’s lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Denver, requests a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction, along with an expedited hearing.  In addition to Silverstein, the plaintiffs are represented by ACLU staff attorneys Sara Neel and Rebecca Wallace.

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