DENVER – Last night, the Denver City Council voted to authorize a $337,250 settlement to compensate three ACLU clients who were the victims of mistaken identity arrests by Denver law enforcement.  The City of Denver previously paid $232,000 in compensation to three additional people named in the same suit.  In each case, the ACLU argued that Denver police deliberately ignored facts that demonstrated that they were arresting or causing the arrest of the wrong person and that Denver Sheriff Department deputies refused to investigate obvious red flags and repeated complaints from plaintiffs and their family that they were locking up the wrong person.

Statement of ACLU of Colorado Legal Director Mark Silverstein

 “The ACLU of Colorado is encouraged that the Denver City Council has now authorized $337,250 to compensate three innocent victims of mistaken ID arrests carried out by Denver law enforcement.

“The mistaken ID arrests were a result of a widespread policy and practice of tolerating egregious mistakes, where a warrant for one person resulted in a different person being arrested.  In the course of discovery in this long-pending lawsuit, the ACLU of Colorado documented more than 500 occasions in a seven-year period in which persons were wrongly arrested and imprisoned in Denver’s jails.   Some persons spent weeks in jail wrongly imprisoned on warrants for others.  Some wound up pleading guilty to crimes they did not commit, in order to secure release for “time served.”

“Arrests carry serious consequences.  Beyond the time spent in jail away from work and family, people who are arrested can lose their jobs and be labeled as criminals in their community.  It’s critically important that when law enforcement chooses to arrest someone, they have firm practices and safeguards in place to ensure that they arrest the right person.

“Since the filing of this suit more than five years ago, the ACLU of Colorado has been working with the City of Denver to develop improved law enforcement policies that will reduce the frequency of mistaken ID arrests, and, when mistakes do happen, that will detect them promptly and remedy them quickly.”

More on this case

DENVER – The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado and the ACLU Women’s Rights Project filed a lawsuit yesterday on behalf of Ashley Provino, a Grand Junction woman who was fired from her job, in violation of state and federal anti-discrimination laws, for asserting her right to pump breast milk at work.

Provino, a new mother, requested permission from her employer, Big League Haircuts, to take a short break every four hours in the back room of the hair salon to express breast milk, as is her right under state and federal law.  The company denied Provino’s request and cut her hours dramatically.  When Provino requested to be returned to a full-time schedule with breaks so she could pump breast milk and continue breastfeeding her child, she was fired.

“Colorado law ensures that no mother is forced to choose between breastfeeding her baby and keeping her job,” said ACLU of Colorado Staff Attorney Rebecca T. Wallace.  “Employers should have no say in a mother’s personal family decision of whether to breastfeed her baby.”

Colorado’s Workplace Accommodations for Nursing Mothers Act, passed by the state legislature in 2008, unequivocally recognizes the societal and health benefits of breastfeeding and requires that employers make reasonable accommodations to allow new mothers to express milk at work. The ACLU complaint invokes the 2008 statute, as well as federal laws that require workplace accommodations for nursing mothers and prohibit sex discrimination, pregnancy discrimination and retaliation for protesting such discrimination.

“Discrimination against breastfeeding mothers in the workplace is not only illegal, it is also bad for Colorado families and businesses, because it forces women out of the workplace,” said ACLU of Colorado cooperating attorney Paula Greisen of King Greisen LLP.

Women who breastfeed must pump milk regularly throughout the day to ensure that they will keep lactating. A broad consensus exists among medical and public health experts that breastfeeding is optimal for infants following birth, and that breastfeeding has broad developmental, psychological, social, economic and environmental benefits.

In September 2012, the ACLU of Colorado and the ACLU Women’s Rights Project successfully negotiated a settlement with a Jefferson County charter school on behalf of Heather Burgbacher, a teacher who lost her job after she requested accommodations to express breast milk at work. 

The ACLU of Colorado also worked with DISH Network earlier this year to vastly improve accommodations for nursing mothers at the company’s corporate headquarters in Englewood following complaints from employees that the conditions provided by the company lacked adequate space and privacy.

more on this case

I support and volunteer with the ACLU of Colorado because there is no better way to ensure social justice than by working within the ACLU to protect, defend, and extend the civil rights and civil liberties of all people.
The ACLU does its work through litigation, education, and legislation, never forgetting the Constitution and Bill of Rights are not just words, but values to live by.  I share in the vow to defend these values.
How could you not be drawn to an organization that works with the sole intent to reverse fundamental wrongs?
Juveniles (2005) and persons diagnosed with mental disabilities (2001) subjected to capital punishment? The ACLU reversed those laws.
Same sex couples (2003) and interracial couples (1967) prosecuted for private acts of intimacy? The ACLU reversed those laws too.
In 2013, when a residential treatment center forced children, many with developmental and mental disabilities, into solitary confinement in the name of therapy, the ACLU of Colorado stopped them.

In 2014, after a long history of courts throwing people in jail because they could not afford to pay fines and fees, the ACLU helped pass a bill to stop this medieval practice.

My donation helps the ACLU and its many civil rights campaigns, including:

• The Campaign to End Mass Incarceration, a broad coalition effort to address systemic problems with our state’s criminal justice system.

• To help create the legal, legislative, and community environments where police brutality is never tolerated.

• To end solitary confinement for inmates with mental illness.

• To secure, once and for all times, reproductive freedom for men and women by keeping government out of our bedrooms!

We know no battle for our civil rights and liberties remains won forever.  So, we need the help of many. And, today I encourage you to help.
I hope you will join me in supporting the ACLU of Colorado on Colorado Gives Day.
Kathleen Hynes is a volunteer speaker for the ACLU of Colorado's Speakers Bureau. For more information about the Speakers Bureau and/or to book a speaking engagement, please visit the Speakers Bureau page.