Colorado’s prison system just ran into a major legal wall in the Denver District Court.
On Friday, Judge Sarah Wallace ordered the Colorado Department of Corrections and Gov. Jared Polis to stop using punishment practices that the court found effectively forced incarcerated people to work. The ruling came after a six-day bench trial in October and zeroed in on what happened when prisoners refused work assignments, including repeated disciplinary write-ups, loss of earned time, and long stretches in isolation. The court found those sanctions crossed the line from encouragement to coercion, and the decision could mean rapid, system-wide changes to how work is assigned and enforced in Colorado’s state prisons.
The written order, filed Feb. 13, lays out several specific steps the state must take to comply. Among them: the court barred a policy that allowed “double charging” prisoners who refused to work and forbade the use or threat of segregation and prolonged isolation as punishment for refusing a job, according to Denver7. The outlet also reported that lead trial counsel David Maxted hailed the decision as a vindication for the class of incarcerated plaintiffs and noted that Polis’ office and CDOC had previously declined to comment while the case was pending.
Findings And The Order
In a 61-page document titled “Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law,” Judge Wallace concluded that CDOC’s disciplinary system, including COPD write-ups, Removal From Population, and Restrictive Housing, had been used in ways that legally compelled incarcerated people to work. The court held that this amounted to involuntary servitude under Article II, Section 26 of the Colorado Constitution and entered a declaratory judgment that the defendants violated the state’s prohibition on slavery and involuntary servitude.
The judge also granted injunctive relief to stop those practices. Among the remedies, the order specifically bars CDOC from charging a second, derivative offense tied to a refusal to work and from imposing isolation of more than 22 hours a day for more than two days as a sanction for refusing to work, as detailed in the court’s “Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law.”
How It Ties To Amendment A
The case is one of the first real tests of a change Colorado voters approved in 2018, known as Amendment A. That measure removed the “punishment for crime” exception from the state constitution and now reads, “There shall never be in this state either slavery or involuntary servitude,” according to the state’s legislative materials. That constitutional change created the legal backdrop for the lawsuit, which was certified as a statewide class action after plaintiffs argued that CDOC used administrative “stacking” of charges to compel labor.
Reporters had been tracking the litigation since the trial opened in October, and the case drew wide interest from prison reform and civil rights advocates watching how courts would interpret Amendment A in practice, according to Colorado Newsline.
Reactions From Advocates
Lead trial counsel David Maxted framed the ruling as a hard-won victory for the people who brought the case. “The Court’s ruling vindicates their struggle and the suffering they endured,” he said, urging the state to comply with the judgment, as reported by Denver7.
Advocacy groups that pushed for Amendment A applauded the decision as a significant enforcement of the constitutional ban on compelled labor inside prisons. CDOC, by contrast, has historically defended its work programs as rehabilitative and essential to keeping facilities running.
What Happens Next
The court’s injunctive orders are automatically stayed for 28 days, giving the state a window to decide whether to appeal. The order notes that if the defendants do appeal, they may also file a motion to extend the stay under Colorado procedure. If the state does not secure a further stay, CDOC will have to revise the policies the judge found unconstitutional and end the specific disciplinary practices described in the ruling.
