University of Colorado Regent Wanda James fellow regents for retaliation, discrimination and free speech violations after the 10 months ago.
James announced on Tuesday that she’s filing a lawsuit and a motion for against the CU Regents, claiming the board discriminatorily voted to censure, or formally reprimand, her for speaking out against racism at CU. The lawsuit and preliminary injunction seek to lift the censure and restore James to her full capacity as a regent.
“This injunction is about restoring my rights and defending the principle that elected officials cannot be punished for speaking truthfully on matters of public concern,” James said.
The CU Board of Regents, the elected board that governs CU and its campuses, censured James on July 2 after it determined, based on an independent investigation, that James violated regent policy when she advocated for defunding a state-funded CU campaign about the risks of high-potency marijuana. James maintains that she did nothing wrong, racist, and said she did not ask the governor to cut funding to the campaign.
James took steps to remove funding from CU, CU spokesperson Michele Ames said, which directly violates the responsibilities of a regent.
“The issue is the fact that seven (of eight) regents voted to censure and sanction Regent James because she violated her fiduciary responsibility to the university, and she did that by advocating to the governor’s office that funding for the public campaign be pulled,” Ames said.
The matter began when James raised concerns in January of 2025 about racially insensitive images used in an educational campaign called “The Tea on THC,” produced by the Colorado School of Public Health at CU’s Anschutz Medical Campus. The images are illustrations of Black children accompanied by language about impulse control challenges and language deficits due to a mother’s use of THC while pregnant.
James brought her concerns about the images to CU leadership, who agreed the images were racist and had them removed within 24 hours. The images that were taken down were part of more than 200 images shared for the campaign on social media to highlight the science around the impact of high-potency THC on developing brains and women carrying children, Ames said.
James owns a marijuana dispensary in Denver, but the board determined there was no conflict of interest issue in this matter.
In the following days and months after the images were taken down, James continued to speak publicly on social media, in emails and in news media interviews, discrediting the campaign and saying its funding from the state should be revoked, according to the independent investigation. The board said it censured James because she advocated for funding to be taken away from the campaign, not because James brought up concerns about racist images. , saying the board censured her because they’re tired of her bringing up issues of racism.
“This lawsuit is absolutely in the best interest of the University of Colorado, not just for the generations of people who have come before but the generations of people who will come after it,” James said. “This is about protecting our students, our faculty and our staff and understanding that there is nothing in America more important than free speech.”
The censure means James has been removed from all regent committee assignments and cannot attend university events as a regent, such as getting free tickets to football games. James is still able to attend all regent meetings and be an active voting member of the board.
All seven regents who voted to censure James are directly named in the lawsuit. Regent Nolbert Chavez was the one regent who voted against the censure and is not included in the lawsuit. He has not offered any comments on why he voted against her censure. James and Chavez are the only two people of color on the board. James is the second regent to ever be censured, and hers is the longest censure ever instated against a regent.
Censures are instated indefinitely, or until the end of a regent’s term, but they can be and are lifted at any point if the board votes to do so.
Regent Callie Rennison that James would need to take some accountability for what happened for the censure to be lifted. As James has continued to maintain that she did nothing wrong, she and the rest of the board have remained at an impasse.
“I was never going to file a lawsuit,” James said. “I honestly believe that this would have been settled within weeks, days. And now we are coming up on a year. … I have done everything humanly possible to get my rights back as a regent, and they have denied it at every turn. We have been forced into this situation.”
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