Last week I noted that the city of Denver had reached a settlement in one of their pending lawsuits -- and now, face a couple of more legal challenges.
Last week, the city reached an interim settlement that includes a temporary restraining order against the cities of Denver and suburban Aurora, Colorado. The restraining order is protecting three people (at least one of which is a US Military Veteran -- Veterans with service dogs have been victims of BSL before in other places), and their dogs, from being prosecuted under the 'pit bull' bans in the two juristictions because they are protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act. The stipulation is being filed as part of a class action lawsuit in the Federal Court seeking permanent relief from having a service dog impounded based solely on its breed.
While the two cities have temporarily agreed to refrain from enforcing their breed specific ordinances as it relates to service dogs, the Animal Law Center, who is leading the lawsuit, is seeking to permanently protect the rights of service dogs owners from pursuant to the ADA from suffering discrimination based solely on the breed of their service dog.
The settlement is an obvious one for the cities -- as people have a lot of protection under the ADA and all of the people involved have legitimate needs for their service dogs.
Meanwhile, this lawsuit -- yet another one for the city of Denver -- again exemplifies the ridiculousness of the city's breed ban as they face even more litigation against them for a law that is being used to 'protect' people from dogs that are being used as service dogs. The law in Denver continues to be an ineffective law that is creating unnecessary expenses for the city.
Aurora, for its part, continues to suffer the financial burden of their law even though the city's 2 year report showed that they reversed a 3 year decline in dog bites with their new law and saw a 26% increase in dog bites two years after passing the law. So now, they are using taxpayer money to defend a law in court that has statistically proven to have had the opposite effect that was intended.
Taxpayers, dog owners and citizens deserve better than this. And as voters in these communities it is imperative that you vote people out of office who are insisting on wasting your taxpayer dollars to defend ineffective laws to support their personal agendas.
More on this from NCRC and from Colorado Pit Bull Rescue
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