A federal judge rejected the Elbert County Sheriff’s Office’s attempt to dismiss a disability rights lawsuit against it on Tuesday, in which the plaintiff alleges she sustained further injuries after being forced to walk home 8.8 miles from the jail overnight.

Amy McCraken has a prosthetic limb from a prior leg amputation. She alleged a sheriff’s deputy stopped her on the night of Aug. 1, 2022, for having expired registration tags, and then saw that McCraken appeared to have a revoked driver’s license. McCraken’s lawsuit noted prosecutors later dismissed both charges.

After her arrest, jail personnel eventually allowed McCraken to use the phone at 2 a.m. Her son in Denver paid her bond but could not pick her up in a vehicle. Despite a Colorado law permitting sheriffs’ offices to keep someone in jail if they cannot leave safely, McCraken was allegedly told to leave and that she would not receive a ride home from law enforcement.

She wound up walking the 8.8 miles home, breaking her prosthetic leg and injuring herself further in the process.

McCraken sued the county and the sheriff’s office for a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act. She argued her disability was obvious and, therefore, deputies were required to reasonably accommodate her. They failed to do so by delaying her ability to make a phone call, ejecting her from the jail, and refusing to provide her with a ride.

Last summer, U.S. District Court Judge Nina Y. Wang largely rejected the county’s motion to dismiss. She found the defense lawyers had injected allegations beyond those in McCraken’s complaint. Further, Wang believed it was better to address the requirements of the ADA in McCraken’s circumstances after the discovery of evidence.

The sheriff’s office then moved to dismiss the claims against it, relying on nearly identical arguments that the county had advanced. McCraken’s attorney alerted Wang that he had said as much to one of the defense lawyers after a February hearing with U.S. Magistrate Judge Cyrus Y. Chung.

“(I) commented on how similar they are to arguments already rejected by this Court and that relitigating them would be wasteful. Defendants’ counsel raised her voice and called undersigned counsel ‘an ass,’ ‘the worst opposing counsel’ she has ever dealt with, and ‘condescending’ before exiting the courtroom,” wrote attorney Aaron Slade. “This conduct occurred in the courtroom in front of Magistrate Judge Chung’s clerk.”

“Defense counsel notes that she disagrees with Plaintiff counsel’s characterization of the conferral that took place in person,” responded attorney Brittney Townsley. “More importantly, she believes written briefs to be an inappropriate forum to address such issues and therefore declines to further address them here.”

In an April 21 order, Wang agreed with Slade that she had already decided the issues raised by the sheriff’s office and she had no reason to change course now.

“Despite this Court’s prior admonition that ‘it would not be in the interest of judicial economy to relitigate arguments that this Court already rejected,’ the ECSO does just that,” she wrote, raising the example of the county previously citing its own alleged facts that did not appear in McCraken’s complaint.

“Inexplicably, the ECSO repeats this same unsuccessful argument — verbatim — in its own Motion,” Wang wrote.

The case is McCraken v. Board of County Commissioners et al.