By Jeffrey A. Roberts
CFOIC Executive Director

Bennett trustees voted this week to settle a First Amendment claim brought by a weekly newspaper that lost town advertising last spring because the board didn’t like an article about a sexual assault that allegedly happened in the locker room of a middle school.

Under an agreement approved by the trustees Tuesday night, the I-70 Scout will receive $15,000 from a municipal insurance pool and a three-year advertising contract, excluding legal notices, for $15,000 per year. The board directed outside counsel to prepare a draft contract for review at its January meeting.

During the meeting, town attorney Scotty Krob called the settlement terms “a compromise, sort of balancing the town’s support of the First Amendment and also recognition of the board’s frustration with an article that was published by the paper.”

Douglas Claussen, publisher of the I-70 Scout and Eastern Colorado News, had threatened to sue the town in an August letter sent by his attorney, Rachael Johnson of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. The letter characterized the trustees’ May 13 vote to pull the town’s display advertising from the newspapers as “egregiously unconstitutional” because it was “openly motivated by retaliation for the I-70 Scout’s editorial decision-making.”

The vote to stop advertising followed a May 7 front-page article by Claussen 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.” Trustee Denice Smith said she was “willing to cut off the advertisement if that’s what needs to be done. You just can’t say something like that about a family.”

Johnson in her letter cited 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.

Johnson 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.”

Under the terms of an ongoing contract, Johnson pointed out, the town of Bennett 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.”

The town announced the settlement decision on its website Wednesday: “This decision was made because the Town strongly believes in the First Amendment and the importance of free speech in a healthy and thriving community.”

“While the Town Board firmly believes that its previous actions were taken ethically and with the best interests of our Eastern Colorado community in mind, we recognize the importance of moving forward with a continued focus on transparency and community support. We remain committed to strengthening trust and communication with those we serve,” the statement adds.

Claussen, in an email to the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, said he’s “glad it’s over. Now let’s get back to the business of building a better community.”

“The Bennett Board of Trustees had no right to interfere with the operation of my newspaper or my freedom of speech, and this agreement attests to that fact, no matter how hard they try to mask it under the thin veil of morality,” he added.

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