Aurora Settles Lawsuit With Protesters Over Public Comment Rules

The City of Aurora has agreed to hold in-person City Council meetings with one-hour public comment periods for three years as part of a settlement with activists who have been demanding more action in response to the death of an unarmed Black man in 2024.

MiDian Shofner (who used her maiden name, Holmes), an activist with the Epitome of Black Excellence and Partnership, sued the City of Aurora last June after the Aurora City Council voted to stop allowing public comment at meetings. She and dozens of other residents had been protesting for more than a year during city council meetings over the death of Kylin Lewis, an unarmed Black man who was shot by SWAT officers without being served a warrant. The protests brought some meetings to a halt and left some councilmembers frustrated and angry at the time.

Lewis was fatally shot by Aurora Police Officer Michael Dieck during a SWAT operation alongside the Denver Police Department. Lewis was a suspect in a recent shooting, and officers were serving an arrest warrant. He was shot while reaching for his phone and shouting, “I don’t have nothing,” body camera footage showed.

“This settlement sends a clear message that communities cannot be silenced for demanding accountability,” Shofner tells Westword. “Justice for Kilyn is still a journey, but safeguarding the public’s right to speak openly about that injustice moves us closer to the truth his family and this city deserve.”

Dieck was not fired by the city. In July 2024, the 18th Judicial District Attorney decided Dieck’s use of force was not a violation of state law. However, the Lewis family filed a lawsuit against the city in 2025, which is still ongoing.

According to the Lewis family’s lawsuit, Shofner began speaking out about “the APD’s killing of Mr. Lewis and her belief there has not been adequate accountability.” Shofner often appeared alongside Lewis’s mother, LaRonda Jones, and other members of his family. Supporters carried signs saying, “Justice for Kilyn” to the council chambers.

Supporters of the Justice for Kilyn group would sign up for public comment to demand Dieck’s firing. They would recount the details of Lewis’s death and often end by calling on the audience to “say his name,” which would follow with a responding “Kilyn Lewis.”

Councilmembers showed a growing frustration with the group as the protests continued. Last July, Councilmember Stephanie Hancock called the group “terrorists, anarchists and opportunists.” After a meeting last January, Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman marched up to Auon’tai Anderson, who leads Justice for Kilyn protests alongside Shofner (his aunt), and yelled in his face despite nearby cameras.

In June 2025, the council passed a motion from former Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky to ban public comments on Lewis while the lawsuit from his family played out; later that month, city council meetings went virtual. Shofner’s lawsuit was filed on June 18, a week after the first virtual council meeting.

The council agreed to return to in-person meetings in October. Shofner says that comments on Lewis were reinstated for listening sessions when the council went virtual, but the comments weren’t on the record and councilmembers didn’t have to attend.

Now, the council will have to keep those meetings in-person for at least three years, no matter who’s in charge, according to the settlement. Each person will receive three minutes to speak, the settlement ensures.

The City of Aurora agreed to pay $75,000 for attorneys’ fees and related costs. According to Shofner, the city must directly pay her attorneys of the Newman McNulty law firm within six business days.

The settlement sets up an “Ad Hoc Rules Committee” to develop “a code of conduct that will govern City Council meetings and the public will have meaningful input in that process.”

One of the agreements specifies that the settlement can’t be confidential.

Aurora’s public comment periods can become quite feisty. The policies blocking public comments and taking meetings virtual were passed last July with the help of a conservative majority that was ousted in the November elections; in-person meetings returned in time for dozens of residents to chew out and roast the outgoing conservatives, including Jurinsky, who didn’t show up. Now that the council has a progressive majority, the tone is less tense despite continued calls for police reform and demonstrations by Justice for Kilyn.

According to the settlement, Shofner and the city agreed “that the rules of decorum at Aurora City Council meetings apply universally to all.”