Kevin Williams spent his life fighting to make sure public places were accessible to all, even suing his own law school before he graduated because of the lack of access on the campus for people using wheelchairs.
He was tireless in his work for the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition and his efforts in the courtroom helped make some of Denver’s most popular attractions more accessible to people with disabilities.
His passion for civil rights was so strong, he sometimes joked that he would work until he died. “And that is what happened,” said Julie Reiskin, co-executive director at the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition.
Williams, who was 57, died Feb. 6 at AdventHealth Porter, a hospital in Denver, from acute respiratory failure as a result of sepsis and pneumonia, Reiskin said.
“The day before he died, he kept trying to ask me about a memo he had written, and about a court case, and he kept asking what I needed him to do,” said Reiskin, Williams’ medical power of attorney and colleague for 27 years.
“He was literally, in his last breaths, still talking about work,” she said.
Williams, who lost the use of his arms and legs in a diving accident at age 19, earned a national profile for his efforts to make Denver safer and easier to navigate for people with limited mobility.
He founded the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition’s legal program shortly after he graduated from University of Denver law school in 1996 and became a powerful part of the group’s disability rights enforcement work, both as a litigator and by hiring other attorneys to enforce disability rights laws, Reiskin said.
“The fact that people know we have lawyers means we get taken more seriously,” Reiskin said. “People with disabilities are a vastly low-income population and there are not lawyers banging down the door to represent us at an affordable or free price. Having people like Kevin really gave our community access to justice that we would not have otherwise.”
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During his 26 years of leadership, the legal program expanded and flourished, Reiskin said, and Williams prevailed in most of the cases he filed as an attorney.
His legal actions forced major changes at stores and restaurant chains, regional public transit systems and several theaters and arenas in Colorado, she said.
“There’s no large venue that he didn’t touch — Coors Field, Pepsi Center, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Fiddler’s Green, Red Rocks,” Reiskin said.
“There’s a lot about Denver that changed because of his work,” she said. “He wasn’t going to take a case unless he researched it and knew we had a good case and we were right. He was an aggressive advocate for his clients.”
Williams advocated for 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 hilarious teacher and compelling lecturer on those subjects and taught disability law to other attorneys and organizations across the country, his colleagues said in an interview Friday.
His advocacy work started with a bang when he sued the law school shortly before he graduated.
“The school was setting up graduation without accessible bathrooms, and they wouldn’t change anything when he confronted them, so he sued the law school,” Reiskin said.
He accepted the win with good humor.
“His fellow colleagues gave him tiny toys shaped like toilets for graduation and he made a song called ‘Let Us Pee’ to the tune of the song ‘Let It Be,’” she said. “There were a number of wheelchair users after Kevin that went to that law school after him who didn’t have to deal with that same accessibility problem.”
A beloved mentor
Williams was a mentor to several young lawyers, including Andrew Montoya, a legal program attorney at the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition.
Montoya said he learned from Williams’ meticulous attention to detail over the last 20 years of working with him. The attorneys worked together on all of their cases and shared a “raw passion” for civil rights and advocating for people with disabilities, so they could get “the same shot in life as anyone else,” Montoya said.
Williams and Montoya used settlements and trials to rack up a string of legal successes, sometimes surprising themselves. The resolutions provided great relief to their clients, Montoya said.
One of those cases was one of Williams’ biggest accomplishments, Montoya said.
In 2018, the two lawyers sued the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office in Jordan v. Shrader.
“Our deaf client had been arrested and put in jail for a couple days without a sign language interpreter and she didn’t really know what was going on,” Montoya said.
Through a settlement, the sheriff’s office agreed to create a booking video in American Sign Language at the Jefferson County Jail to ensure people with hearing disabilities understood the intake process and the rules at the facility.
“They actually agreed to allow our plaintiff, who was a professional interpreter, to be the interpreter who worked with them and they made sure they put out these videos in a proper way and they, in fact, paid her for her time doing so,” Montoya said.
“That sort of restorative justice still sits with me as a huge accomplishment. None of that would have been possible without Kevin,” Montoya said.
Williams made waves both big and small, his colleague said.
After Williams sued Red Rocks in Williams v. Denver in 1999 and Lucas v. Denver in 2016, the amphitheater created policies to ensure people with physical disabilities had better access to the venue.
Williams’ litigation prevented scalpers from purchasing the entire front row of seating at Red Rocks, the only row, except for the very back of the amphitheater, that can accommodate wheelchairs, Montoya said.
Those lawsuits also helped create accessible parking closer to the front of the venue and a shuttle still takes people with disabilities from accessible parking lots to the front of the amphitheater, Montoya said.
“We won more cases than we lost,” Reiskin said. “He paid very close attention to ethics. He was strategic in terms of looking at all the theories of law that could possibly be used.”
After Williams sued the Regional Transportation District on behalf of Reiskin and others in 2014, RTD made changes to its light rail trains.
Before Williams filed the “fairly contentious litigation,” there wasn’t enough room on the trains for wheelchairs, said Reiskin, who uses a wheelchair. After the lawsuit, the RTD removed seats on the train to make space for wheelchairs, she added.
Williams began mentoring Montoya in 2005, shortly after he began working at the Cross-Disability Coalition as a legal assistant. Williams never made Montoya feel like a subordinate. Williams treated everyone equally, Montoya said.
Williams’ cousin Marilyn Davis described him as funny, cynical and a lover of children. “I’m very sad,” she said. “I did not expect this, but speaking about him in the past is bothering me today.”
Williams graduated from the University of Colorado Denver in 1993 and the University of Denver College of Law, now the Sturm College of Law, in 1996.
He received many awards for his litigation including the Order of St. Ives from Denver Law, the Liberty Bell Award from the Denver Bar Association and the Ralph Carr Award from the ACLU of Colorado, among many others.
He grew up in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland and made Colorado his home in 1990, the same year the Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted.
He was a fan of Colorado’s mountain drives, concert venues, music festivals and local brewing and distilling industries, colleagues said.
“He was always thinking about impact and how we were going to make a sustainable change and create a program that could continue enforcing civil rights for people with disabilities,” Reiskin said. “All of us with disabilities who either live in or enjoy life in Colorado owe him a debt of gratitude for making things more accessible.”