News & Commentary

October 10, 2012

First Public Settlement of Legal Challenge to Enforce Colorado’s 2008 Workplace Nursing Mothers Act

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August 28, 2012

Under pressure from the ACLU of Colorado, the Douglas County School District (“DCSD”) late Tuesday afternoon lifted its order prohibiting journalist and videographer Brian Malone from attending school board meetings. The order was lifted in response to an ACLU demand letter sent late Monday afternoon by ACLU cooperating counsel Steve Zansberg and Chris Beall, of the Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz law firm. In the letter, ACLU lawyers demanded that DCSD immediately withdraw its directive—issued last week—that prohibited Mr. Malone from attending any future school board meetings. The ACLU also demanded that DCSD immediately withdraw its directive that required Mr. Malone, unlike any other member of the public or press, to receive pre-approval from DCSD before audio or video recording public meetings conducted on DCSD grounds. In less than twenty-four hours, DCSD complied with each of the ACLU’s demands.

In a follow-up to the ACLU's letter of July 16, which criticized a "Gypsy scams" alert as encouraging racial profiling, the ACLU sent a follow-up letter congratulating the Arapahoe County Sheriff for his response, which included discontinuing training seminars sponsored by a consulting group that employed ethnic-based characterizations of criminal activity. 

ACLU-CO’s Boulder Chapter scored a victory yesterday when the City of Boulder chose to drop a proposed ordinance requiring permits for demonstrations. Thanks to our Boulder friends for speaking up and saying no!

Change can be slow. The legal process takes time, and it can take months or years to see the results of hard work on behalf of civil liberties. Getting an unconstitutional policy changed in 48 hours is almost unheard of, but that’s exactly what I was able to do last week.

By Rosalie Wilmot