Kevin Williams, civil rights legal program director for the Colorado Cross Disability Coalition, filed hundreds of lawsuits on behalf of people with disabilities during his tenure. (Courtesy of Spencer Kontnick)
Kevin Williams has fought his whole life to ensure that public places are accessible to all, so much so that he sued his own law school before he graduated because people who use wheelchairs couldn’t access the campus.
He worked tirelessly for the Colorado Coalition for People with Disabilities and through his efforts in court, helped make some of Denver’s most popular tourist attractions more accessible to people with disabilities.
His passion for the civil rights movement was so strong that he joked that he would work until the day he died, “and that’s what happened,” said Julie Raiskin, co-executive director of the Colorado Federation of People with Disabilities.
Williams, who was 57, died on Feb. 6 at AdventHealth Porter Hospital in Denver from acute respiratory failure due to sepsis and pneumonia, Raiskin said.
“The day before he died, he tried to ask me about the notes he had written, about the trial, and he kept asking me what he wanted me to do,” said Reiskin, Williams’ health care representative and colleague for 27 years.
“He was literally talking about work until his last breath,” she said.
Williams, who lost the use of his arms and legs in a diving accident at age 19, gained national fame for his efforts to make Denver safer and more accessible for people with disabilities.
Reiskin said that shortly after graduating from the University of Denver Law School in 1996, he founded the Colorado Coalition on Disabilities’ legal program and played a strong role in the organization’s disability rights enforcement efforts, both as a litigation lawyer and by hiring other lawyers to enforce disability rights laws.
“The fact that people know we have an attorney means we’re taken more seriously,” Raiskin said. “People with disabilities are extremely low-income and we don’t have lawyers coming knocking on our doors to represent us at affordable or even free rates. Having someone like Kevin has really given our community access to justice that they wouldn’t have had otherwise.”
During Williams’ 26 years of leadership, the law program expanded and thrived, and Williams won most of the cases he filed as an attorney, Raiskin said.
His legal actions have led to big changes for Colorado stores, restaurant chains, local public transportation and some theaters and arenas, she said.
“There’s not a big venue that he hasn’t touched: Coors Field, Pepsi Center, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Fiddler’s Green, Red Rocks,” Raiskin said.
“Denver has been so different because of his work,” she said. “He wouldn’t take on a case until he’d done his research and found that we had the case and that our claims were valid. He was an aggressive lawyer who was on behalf of his clients.”
Williams championed the rights of people with disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act of 1951, and the Colorado Fair Housing Act of 1959.
He was a highly entertaining teacher and persuasive lecturer on those subjects, teaching disability law to other lawyers and groups around the country, colleagues said in interviews Friday.
His advocacy career began with a flourish when he sued his law school just before graduating.
“He sued the law school after the school prepared to hold his graduation ceremony without accessible restrooms and his protests didn’t change anything,” Raiskin said.
He accepted his victory in good spirits.
“Kevin’s colleagues gave him a little toilet-shaped toy for his graduation, and he wrote a song called ‘Let Us Pee’ to go along with ‘Let It Be,'” she says. “Several wheelchair users went to law school after Kevin, but they didn’t have the same accessibility issues.”
A Beloved Leader
Williams was a mentor to several young lawyers, including Andrew Montoya, a legal program attorney with the Colorado Cross Disability Coalition.
Montoya said he learned from Williams’s meticulous attention to detail over the past 20 years of working with him. The two lawyers worked together on every case and shared a “genuine passion” for civil rights and disability advocacy, working to ensure that people with disabilities have “the same chance at life as anyone else,” Montoya said.
Messrs. Williams and Montoya have used settlements and trials to rack up a string of legal victories, sometimes surprising even themselves. Montoya said the resolutions have provided great relief for his clients.
Kevin Williams, left, speaks during an event at the Greek Amphitheater in Civic Center Park. Williams, who died at age 57, was a dynamic attorney who made many of Denver’s most popular attractions more accessible to people with disabilities. Plans are underway to renovate the amphitheater to make it fully accessible for the first time since it was built more than 100 years ago. (Courtesy of Colorado Federation of Disabilities)
Montoya said one of those incidents was one of Williams’ greatest achievements.
In 2018, their lawyers sued the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office in Jordan v. Schrader.
“Our client, who is deaf, was arrested and held in jail for several days without a sign language interpreter and had no idea what was going on,” Montoya said.
As part of the settlement, the sheriff’s office agreed to create intake videos in American Sign Language at the Jefferson County Jail to help people who are hearing impaired understand the facility’s intake procedures and rules.
“They actually agreed to hire the plaintiff, who is a professional interpreter, as an interpreter, and they made sure that these videos were released in an appropriate manner, and they actually paid her for the time that she spent interpreting,” Montoya said.
“This restorative justice initiative remains a huge achievement for me. None of it would have been possible without Kevin,” Montoya said.
Williams caused waves of shock and ripples, big and small, colleagues said.
After Williams sued Red Rocks in Williams v. Denver in 1999 and Lucas v. Denver in 2016, the amphitheater created policies to make the venue more accessible to people with disabilities.
Kevin Williams blows bubbles with the daughter of a coworker. Williams died Feb. 6 at age 57 and is remembered for his tireless work advocating for disability rights through litigation. (Courtesy of the Colorado Alliance for People with Disabilities)
Williams’ lawsuit prevents scalpers from purchasing all of the front-row seats at Red Rocks, the only wheelchair accessible row except for the back of the amphitheater, Montoya said.
Those lawsuits also helped secure the creation of handicapped parking near the front of the venue, and a shuttle bus still operates to take people with disabilities from the handicapped parking spots to the front of the amphitheater, Montoya said.
“He won more cases than he lost,” Mr. Raiskin said. “He was very scrupulous about ethics. He was strategic in that he explored every possible legal theory that could be used.”
After Williams sued the RTA on behalf of Raiskin and others in 2014, the RTA made changes to its light rail trains.
Raiskin, who uses a wheelchair, said trains did not have enough wheelchair space before Williams filed her “fairly contentious lawsuit.” After the lawsuit, RTD removed seats from trains to make room for wheelchairs, she added.
Williams began mentoring Montoya in 2005, soon after Montoya began working as a legal assistant at the Cross Disability Coalition. Williams never treated Montoya like a subordinate; he treated everyone equally, Montoya said.
Williams’ cousin, Marilyn Davis, described him as funny, sarcastic and a fan of children. “It’s very sad,” she said. “I never expected this, but now it bothers me when I hear about the man he was.”
Williams graduated from the University of Colorado at Denver in 1993 and the University of Denver School of Law (now the Sturm School of Law) in 1996.
He has received numerous awards for his litigation work, including the Order of St. Ives from Denver Law School, the Liberty Bell Award from the Denver Bar Association, and the Ralph Carr Award from the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado.
Kevin Williams died on February 6 at AdventHealth Porter Hospital in Denver. (Courtesy of the Colorado Cross Disability Coalition)
He grew up in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland and moved to Colorado in 1990, the year the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed.
Colleagues said he was a fan of Colorado’s mountain drives, concert venues, music festivals and the local brewing and distilling industry.
“He was always thinking about impact and how to create sustainable change and create programs that continue to protect the civil rights of people with disabilities,” Reiskin said. “All of us with disabilities who live or enjoy life in Colorado are grateful to him for making things more accessible.”
Article type: News
It is based on facts that the reporter has observed and verified firsthand, or that have been reported and verified by knowledgeable sources.