Eight years after Colorado voters abolished prison slavery by a two-thirds margin, a Denver judge ruled the state ignored them. Judge Sarah B. Wallace found the Colorado Department of Corrections, Director Moses Stancil, and Governor Jared Polis violated the state constitution by forcing inmates to work under threat of solitary confinement.
Wallace issued the ruling February 16 in Mortis v. Polis, a class-action lawsuit representing thousands of Colorado inmates. She found the coercion was “not isolated but a pervasive and actively operationalized feature” of CDOC’s labor management. The order directs the department to stop using segregation threats and a practice called “double-charging” — punishing inmates twice for refusing work assignments. Defendants have 28 days to appeal.
Harold Mortis, 35, filed the suit in February 2022 from Sterling Correctional Facility, where he is serving 40 years for second-degree murder. He testified that guards ordered him to work longer kitchen shifts while sick with COVID-19 and threatened him with “the hole” when he refused. Other inmates described losing earned time for work refusal — pushing their parole dates further back. The court heard from 11 witnesses before ruling.
Colorado voters passed Amendment A in November 2018 with 66% approval. The measure stripped the words “except as a punishment for crime” from Article II, Section 26 of the state constitution. The text now reads: “There shall never be in this state either slavery or involuntary servitude.” Colorado was the first state to close the loophole. A similar measure failed two years earlier by less than one percent after voters struggled with confusing ballot language.
Five other states — Utah, Nebraska, Alabama, Oregon, and Vermont — have since passed similar amendments. The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution still contains the punishment exception.
Both CDOC and Polis denied the conduct. Spokesperson Alondra Gonzalez-Garcia said the department “agrees that slavery and forced labor are wrong and illegal” and described work programs as voluntary rehabilitation opportunities. Polis echoed that position. The state defended the lawsuit for four years before Wallace ruled against it.
The ruling lands in the middle of a separate federal investigation. In December 2025, the Department of Justice opened a Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act probe into all 21 CDOC state prisons and 12 Division of Youth Services facilities. That investigation, led by Associate Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, examines inadequate medical care, unsafe conditions, and excessive force against juveniles. Whatever political motivations launched the federal probe — it followed a public fight between the Trump administration and Polis over imprisoned former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters — a state court has now independently confirmed constitutional violations inside the same system.
The case also carries a political footnote. Towards Justice, one of the firms that brought the suit, is led by Executive Director David Seligman, a Democratic candidate for Colorado attorney general in 2026.
Wallace’s ruling is the first court enforcement of a state constitutional amendment removing the penal labor exception. A federal investigation of the same prison system is running on a separate track.
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