Judge says GEO Group’s immunity appeal is ‘only for the purposes of delay’

By Michael Karlik | The Denver Gazette

The Denver-based federal appeals court has rejected a last-minute request from The GEO Group to halt next week’s jury trial in a 12-year-old forced-labor lawsuit out of the company’s Aurora detention facility.

The class-action case, which has been pending since 2014, alleges that GEO Group violated the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act by requiring detainees to clean not just their personal space, but the common areas of the detention center under threat of solitary confinement. Those actions allegedly violated the law’s prohibition on knowingly coercing labor from another person through serious harm or threats of serious harm.

The plaintiff detainees also alleged GEO Group unjustly enriched itself by paying them only $1 per day through a “voluntary” labor program.

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