By Jeffrey A. Roberts
CFOIC Executive Director
A lawyer’s letter urges the Bennett trustees to rescind their “egregiously unconstitutional” decision to pull the town’s advertising from two Eastern Plains newspapers because they didn’t like an article about a sexual assault that allegedly happened at a middle school.
Sent last week by Rachael Johnson, a Colorado-based attorney with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the letter says The I-70 Scout, the Eastern Colorado News and publisher Douglas Claussen are “fully prepared to litigate these issues, if necessary.”
“The Board’s actions go far beyond failure to abide by its contractual obligations,” Johnson wrote on Aug. 7. “Rather, in deciding to terminate its advertisement relationship solely based on the content of The I-70 Scout’s reporting — specifically, an article from May 7, 2025, that truthfully reported on a police investigation into a sexual assault that took place in a … school locker room — the Board violated The I-70 Scout’s First Amendment rights.”
Johnson added that “a long line of cases has recognized that this exact type of decision — withdrawal of government ads — is unconstitutional when it is made in retaliation for First Amendment-protected expression.”
The trustees’ May 13 vote to withdraw display ads from the newspapers followed a May 7 front-page article by Claussen in The I-70 Scout that included some graphic details from a redacted incident report obtained from the Adams County Sheriff’s Office. In the story, Claussen reported that the suspension of five employees from a Strasburg middle school was the result of a sexual assault of one boy by six other boys after track practice. “Shockingly, the mother of the victim did not want to press charges,” the article also says.
The next week, Claussen published an apology for providing “too many details of the crime” that were “unneeded.” He also wrote that he “should not have used the term ‘shockingly’ in reference to the mother’s decision — that is how I felt, and it crept into the story.”
The evening before the apology ran, Trustee Royce Pindell called on his fellow board members to stop spending any more of the town’s money with the I-70 Scout and the Eastern Colorado News. He said Claussen’s newspapers “have concerned me for most of the years I’ve lived out here, but this is by far the worst I’ve ever seen him do to anyone.” Mayor Whitney Oakley called the article “extremely distasteful.”
“I’m willing to cut off the advertisement if that’s what needs to be done,” added Trustee Denice Smith. “You just can’t say something like that about a family.”
Because the board’s decision “was openly motivated by retaliation for The I-70 Scout’s editorial decision-making, the withdrawal of advertising was egregiously unconstitutional,” Johnson’s letter alleges. Under the terms of an ongoing contract, she noted, the town had agreed to buy a minimum amount of advertising in Claussen’s publications, “though, in practice, the town purchased significantly larger amounts of advertising space to promote particular events, such as the annual Bennett Days celebrations.”
“As a result of the Bennett Board’s blatantly unconstitutional actions on May 13, The I-70 Scout has lost hundreds of dollars in revenue and stands to lose thousands more,” the letter adds.
Rulings cited by Johnson include two orders from the U.S. District Court in Colorado holding that the government cannot revoke advertising from a newspaper based on its content. One case concerned allegations by The Greeley Tribune that the Weld County Public Trustee withheld legal ads from the newspaper in retaliation for news coverage and a critical editorial. The other involved allegations the town of Frisco pulled ads from a weekly newspaper because it published news stories and editorials that criticized the town’s government.
“Those who hold transient power over the public purse cannot abuse it to suppress the speech of their political or public critics,” wrote Judge Richard Matsch in the Frisco ruling.
Johnson in her letter also noted the 2022 settlement of a federal lawsuit that accused the Custer County commissioners of violating the Wet Mountain Tribune’s First Amendment rights when they revoked its status as the county’s paper of record and instead gave the county’s legal notices contract to a rival newspaper. The lawsuit alleged the commissioners retaliated against the Tribune for publishing “a series of news reports that accurately exposed resume fraud by a county official and otherwise were critical of county government administration.”
Johnson asked the Bennett trustees to reconsider their decision “in the hope that we can resolve this matter without litigation.”
The Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition did not get a response to an emailed request for comment sent Monday to Bennett’s mayor, town attorney and town manager.
The agenda for Tuesday evening’s meeting of the town board shows an executive session for the trustees “to confer with the town attorney to receive legal advice on specific legal questions related to a notice of claim received from the newspaper.”
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