Denver Judge Says Colorado Prison Work Policies Violate State Constitution

By Austen Erblat | CBS Colorado

A Denver judge on Friday ruled that the Colorado Department of Corrections has been violating a 2018 amendment to the state constitution by requiring people in state prisons to work under the threat of solitary confinement and other punishments.

The ruling comes as part of a class action lawsuit filed four years ago by Harold Mortis, who’s serving a 40-year sentence at the Sterling Correctional Facility for a 2016 second-degree murder charge, to which he pleaded guilty. The suit was filed on behalf of thousands of people who are incarcerated in Colorado state prisons.

Denver District Court Judge Sarah Wallace ruled that CDOC, its director Moses Stancil, and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis are violating people’s rights under Article II, Section 26 of the state constitution, which was amended in 2018 to prohibit slavery or involuntary servitude. Before the amendment, which over 66% of Colorado voters approved, that section of the state constitution prohibited slavery or involuntary servitude, “except as a punishment for crime.”

“The Court enters a declaratory judgment that Defendants are in violation of the prohibition against involuntary servitude under Section 26, Article II, of the Colorado Constitution,” Wallace wrote in her ruling. She went on to say that Mortis and all other people covered by the class action suit, “have a constitutional right to be free from slavery and involuntary servitude without exception.”

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