On November 3, 2016, a female prisoner in the custody of the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility filed this pro se lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado. The plaintiff sued the State of Colorado, the Colorado Department of Corrections, and the Warden of the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and 42 U.S.C. § 1983, seeking damages. She claimed that defendants violated the ADA as well as her constitutional rights to due process under the Fourteenth Amendment and against cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.

Specifically, the plaintiff alleged she was denied a Sorenson Video Phone (SVP) after she placed multiple requests with the Department of Corrections to provide one so that she could communicate with her parents, who were deaf. The SVP offers a service for the deaf community paid for by the government for those who qualify under the ADA. Although the plaintiff originally struggled to meet the court’s pleading standards, once she obtained counsel from the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center on March 31, 2017, she filed a third amended complaint on June 15, 2017, adding three new plaintiffs. The new complaint also added claims under the Rehabilitation Act and replaced allegations of Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment violations with claims of First Amendment violations.

The case was assigned to Magistrate Judge Gordon P. Gallagher and then later reassigned to Magistrate Judge Scott T. Varholak. On June 30, 2017, the defendants filed a motion to dismiss the third amended complaint, claiming that the plaintiff lacked standing to assert her claims under the ADA and Rehabilitation Act and that the plaintiffs failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted.

The court disagreed with the defendants’ arguments and on September 29, 2017, denied the motion to dismiss. The court found that the plaintiff had standing to assert her ADA and Rehabilitation Act claims, that the plaintiff pleaded sufficiently plausible claims for relief.

On January 22, 2018, the plaintiffs filed a fourth amended complaint, adding two plaintiffs and removing the Fourteenth Amendment claim. The defendants filed an answer to this complaint on February 5, 2018. The plaintiffs dismissed an additional defendant on October 25, 2018 without explanation. Four days later, the plaintiffs filed a motion for partial summary judgment, arguing that the Colorado Department of Corrections could not prove that the TTY phones it had were as effective as videophones and that CDOC provided no affirmative defenses under the Effective Communication Claim. In response, the defendants filed a motion for summary judgment on October 29, 2018, arguing in part that the plaintiffs failed to exhaust their administrative remedies through the prison grievance system.

The plaintiffs joined their case with Rabinkov v. Colorado Department of Corrections, another federal case against the CDOC regarding the provision (or lack thereof) of videophones to deaf prisoners or relatives of deaf individuals on November 20, 2018. On December 27, 2018, the plaintiffs filed a motion to certify a class of similarly-situated deaf prisoners; however, the motion was withdrawn less than a month later.

On January 14, the defendants filed a motion to dismiss, and on January 17, the plaintiffs filed an amended complaint. On January 25, 2019, the defendants filed a motion to dismiss the plaintiffs’ claim for failure to state a claim; this was dismissed by Judge Varholak on April 9, 2019. Defendants then moved for summary judgment and for dismissal on mootness grounds on May 6, and June 21, respectively.

On September 18, 2019, Judge Varholak ruled on several outstanding motions: the defendants’ motion to dismiss, filed on June 21, 2019, one plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment, filed on January 17, 2019, and the defendants’ motion for summary judgment, filed on May 6, 2019. Judge Varholak denied the June 21 motion (finding that the defendants had not met the burden to show that the plaintiffs’ claims were moot), granted the January 17 motion (one plaintiff’s motion for partial summary judgment on ADA and Rehabilitation Act claims), and granted in part and denied in part the May 6 motion (finding that two out of three plaintiffs had failed to exhaust administrative remedies but denying the defendants’ motion to dismiss regarding the remaining plaintiff’s ADA and Rehabilitation Act claims, First Amendment claims, and claims for compensatory damages). Finally, Judge Varholak ordered the Colorado Department of Corrections to make videophones available and to adopt effective and comprehensive policies relating to videophones. 2019 WL 4464036.

On October 4, 2019, the plaintiffs filed a joint motion for referral to a settlement conference, and Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter was assigned to conduct a settlement conference. The parties gave no reason for the sudden change in tactic. Currently, the conference is scheduled for October 28, 2019. The case is ongoing.

Jake Parker - 06/15/2018
Elizabeth Helpling - 10/29/2019


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