DENVER – The City of Aurora has agreed to cancel hundreds of dollars of debt and reimburse nearly $800 in overpayments that James Fisher made to the Aurora Municipal Court while he attempted to resolve rapidly-ballooning fees that he could not afford to pay, according to a settlement announced today by the ACLU of Colorado.

"James Fisher was trapped in a cycle of debt that is all too familiar to thousands of low-income Coloradans ticketed for minor ordinance violations.  He made payment after payment to the court, but his debt continued to grow.  Although Mr. Fisher eventually paid more than double his original fines, the Aurora Municipal Court kept coming back for more, issuing warrants when he missed a payment,” said ACLU of Colorado Legal Director Mark Silverstein. “With this settlement, Mr. Fisher can finally put this nightmare behind him and move on with his life.”

In 2012, Fisher was sentenced to pay $678 in fines for three municipal ordinance violations – two open container tickets issued on the same night and a citation for driving without proof of insurance.

Over the next four years, while Fisher struggled with homelessness and unsteady work as a day laborer, he nonetheless made 19 separate payments to the Court totaling $1498 – more than twice his original fines. Yet, he still owed the court $860. The Court imposed payment schedules that Fisher could not meet, made each of his due dates a court appearance, and then issued “failure to appear” warrants when he could not make a payment.  Municipal courts across Colorado often used these “failure to appear” warrants to coerce payment after the state legislature in 2014 outlawed “failure to pay” warrants in ACLU-backed legislation aimed at curbing debtors’ prisons.

In total, 13 arrest warrants were issued for Mr. Fisher when he was unable to make steady payments.  Each new warrant tacked at least $100 in additional fees onto Fisher’s debt.  On several occasions, the court assessed fees simultaneously across Fisher’s three cases following a single missed payment.  For example, in one instance, Fisher missed a $70 payment that was scheduled in a single case.  Aurora assessed a $25 “Failure to Appear Fee” and a $75 “Warrant Fee” in each of his three active cases, totaling $300 for a single missed payment date.

In 2016, Fisher joined the ACLU of Colorado in testifying before the state legislature in support of a new law to stop Colorado municipal courts from using “failure to appear” warrants to collect payment from indigent defendants who cannot afford to pay.  House Bill 16-1311 passed with strong bipartisan majorities and was signed into law by Governor Hickenlooper last June.

Subsequently, the City of Aurora voluntarily vacated 2,859 warrants that had been issued for non-payment of outstanding debts.  In Fisher’s case, after a negotiation with the ACLU of Colorado, the City further agreed to cancel all of his remaining debt and to reimburse $790 in payments that he had made in excess of his original fines.

“On one hand, I feel like a weight has been lifted off of me. I also feel a sense of pride that I hung in there and fought a good fight,” said Fisher. “I hope this settlement sends a message to the courts and to the community that the ACLU will stand up for people, and that the fight for economic and social justice isn’t over - it’s just getting started.”

“We are thrilled that Mr. Fisher is finally free of the debt cycle that the Aurora Municipal Court had trapped him in for four years,” said ACLU of Colorado Staff Attorney Rebecca Wallace. “But there are still thousands of impoverished Coloradoans who need relief from excessive court debt.  Municipal courts across the state, including Aurora, should be revising their debt collection practices to prevent the continuation of the current two-tiered system of justice – one in which wealthy defendants who commit minor violations quickly pay their fines and move on with their lives, while poor defendants remain indebted and tied to the criminal justice system for years, often paying the court significantly more money than their wealthier counterparts to resolve their case."

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As Donald Trump takes the Oath of Office as President, the American Civil Liberties Union invites you to take your own oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States.  Whatever challenges we may face to principles of due process, privacy, equal protection and freedom from cruelty, the ACLU will stand firm.  The ACLU is ready to defend First Amendment rights of press, protest, speech, and religious freedom for all people.  We will not ignore threats to the rights of immigrants, women, people of color, religious minorities, LGBTQ communities, people with disabilities, people experiencing poverty or homelessness, or anyone else.  What constitutional rights and freedoms are you most committed to upholding and defending?  What do you want to promise in your own People’s Oath?
Starting today, our responses will be to the actions and policies of Trump's administration, not merely to his words or tweets.   Today the ACLU took its first legal action against the Trump Administration. On behalf of the American public, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Office of Government Ethics and three other government offices demanding access to key documents concerning Trump’s conflicts of interest.
The ACLU of Colorado will participate in national struggles for freedom and justice while seeking to make Colorado a Civil Liberties Safe Zone, protecting our rights in this state no matter what happens nationally.  Colorado’s legislative session is already underway, including bills that we support to improve police practices, end the death penalty, and stop criminalization of homelessness, and bills we will fight that would allow discrimination in the name of religion or undermine abortion rights in Colorado.  The ACLU of Colorado keeps track of more than a hundred bills each year. To follow what we are doing this year, track our legislative database.
I am awed by and grateful for the outpouring of new members, volunteers and supporters for the ACLU in the last two months—it is what most gives me hope.  Using that support, we are building our capacity for public policy, litigation, education and communication, all in order to protect and advance civil rights and civil liberties in this new political environment. We will protect dissenters if they are silenced, activists if they are spied upon, women who could lose their reproductive rights, immigrant families that could be ripped apart, youth who have been caught up in the criminal justice system, people who can’t afford bail or bond, and anyone vulnerable to having their rights denied.
The ACLU of Colorado will need your support not just today, but throughout the next four years and beyond.  We work in coalition with dozens of partner organizations, and they will need your support as well.  We have an incredible community of people and organizations in this state committed to the basic principles of democracy and the Constitution, and we all need each other now.   Ultimately, the promises of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are for everyone, so no matter who you are or who you voted for, the ACLU is defending your rights, too.  What better way to express those rights than to take your own Oath of Office as an American today?

This upcoming legislative session will have many familiar themes. In fact, the make-up at the Capitol looks very similar to the 2016 session, where each of our six top priority bills enjoyed bipartisan support on their way to being passed into law.
Related: Make Colorado a Civil Liberties Safe Zone

This year, we’ll continue working with legislators on restoring trust between police and communities. One planned piece of legislation will direct officers to provide the reason they stop an individual at a traffic or pedestrian stop. The evidence suggests that informing an individual of the basis for a stop is an effective de-escalation technique and should be a routine practice among law enforcement officers. A second piece of legislation deals with police transparency and accountability. Currently, many local law enforcement agencies refuse to provide information concerning the internal investigations of individual officers, even when the investigation is closed and no longer ongoing. We believe that the public has the right to know the outcome of investigations of police officers. Providing that transparency would enhance accountability and therefore, improve trust between police and community, which is essential for everyone’s safety.
We also plan to continue addressing many of the miscarriages of justice that happen in municipal courts. Last session, we championed two bills that addressed debtors’ prisons and the availability of public defenders in municipal courts. The cities vigorously fought the public defender bill, but it is now law. What we hear from a few municipal court judges is an unintended consequence is that people who are in jail over minor non-violent offenses will stay in longer because the courts won’t be able to provide a public defender quickly enough. To address that concern, we are looking into legislation that would require those individuals to be released if they are not likely to see a judge within a 48-hour timeframe.
Perhaps our most aspirational goal this session will be an attempt to end the death penalty in Colorado. Senator Guzman will initiate that legislation in the Senate, and we will need all the phone calls, emails, and letters to the Capitol we can get to make it happen.
Finally, in the area of privacy and technology, we are supporting legislation that would require law enforcement to secure a warrant before accessing an individual’s electronic communications. There is concern from technology providers that they have no guidance on how to respond to law enforcement requests and this legislation would establish a process to help those providers, but more importantly, to provide important privacy protections for individuals.