The city of Denver approved a $4.7 million settlement to more than 300 Black Lives Matter protesters over accusations that local law enforcement used excessive force and violated their First Amendment rights.
The class-action suit accused Denver police of implementing an emergency curfew that was “applied discriminatorily against protesters” between May 30 and June 5, 2020. While more than 350 protesters were originally arrested for violating the public-safety order, the majority of charges were subsequently dropped.
“Denver used its militarized police force to unlawfully arrest over 300 people for protesting the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor,” one plaintiff arrested during the 2020 demonstrations told CBS News following the announcement. “The city has agreed to pay for this one instance of violent suppression of free speech, while they continue to brutalize and imprison people every day. Our message is that Black Lives Matter is as necessary now as it was in 2020.”
However, the Denver Police Department has refused to admit any wrongdoing in the matter. “Denver denies its curfew order was unconstitutionally enforced,” a spokesperson for the office said in a terse statement to the New York Times.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Wang, an attorney representing the group, maintained in a public statement on Monday, “Over 300 people were arrested for the simple act of protesting,”
“The First Amendment does not allow police to clear the streets of protesters simply because they do not agree with their message,” Wang wrote on X, the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter.
The settlement comes barely a year after the city reached a deal with a separate group of protesters over similar accusations of police misconduct. In March 2022, a jury in Colorado ruled that poor training among law enforcement contributed to violations of the First and Fourth Amendments of twelve individuals during the 2020 summer protests.
“The verdict is a message to the police department, to the highest echelons of the police department, but also a message to police departments all over the country,” the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) chapter in Colorado said following the ruling.
Colorado joins a string of American cities that have paid out millions to BLM protesters in recent months. In July, New York City agreed to a $13 million deal, translating to almost $10,000 for each of the thousands of people arrested during the summer protests in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
“Although the city does not admit liability in this settlement, the size of this monetary settlement, coupled with the earlier settlement about Mott Haven, strongly suggests otherwise,” one plaintiff said in a statement following the deal. “It is also a testament to the importance of collective action to redress violations of important constitutional rights.”
In March, Philadelphia paid nearly $10 million to roughly 350 plaintiffs citing similar misconduct. “This power must not go unchecked. It must be confronted,” one of the attorneys representing the demonstrators said.
The “pain and trauma caused by a legacy of systemic racism and police brutality against Black and Brown Philadelphians is immeasurable,” Mayor Jason Kenney said at the time.