Four Douglas County sheriff’s deputies can face a civil rights lawsuit over the detention of a 16-year-old on Quebec Street, after a federal judge rejected their request to dismiss the case. U.S. District Judge Philip A. Brimmer ruled Sept. 23 that Austin Kim had plausibly alleged deputies detained him without reasonable suspicion that he had broken the law. The decision allows his claims under the U.S. and Colorado constitutions to proceed; it does not decide whether the deputies are ultimately liable. Kim says he was walking along Quebec Street early one morning in May 2023 when Deputies Scott Kelly and Anthony Cordova approached. They had received a report of a boy, estimated to be 10 or 11, who might be sleepwalking in the area, according to court filings. Kim alleges the deputies grabbed him and pinned him against their patrol vehicle. Deputies Benjamin Espinoza and Andrew Sanders then arrived and restrained him, the lawsuit says. Cordova allegedly took Kim’s phone, and the deputies directed a medical worker who arrived to assess him to search it. The deputies later released Kim from the patrol vehicle, and he continued walking. The county argued that the deputies had reason to detain Kim to identify him and investigate. Its filing cited his alleged blank stare and refusal to identify himself, and said that although he was not the child described in the initial report, he was still a minor. But the county’s dispatch log and reports placed the encounter at 5:22 a.m. Douglas County’s curfew for people under 18 runs from midnight to 5 a.m. Kim’s lawsuit also alleges the deputies’ reports incorrectly recorded the encounter as having occurred before 5 a.m. Brimmer said the complaint did not establish when the person who made the initial report saw the younger child, and the deputies therefore had no apparent basis to believe the child had violated curfew. By the time they encountered Kim, the curfew had ended. The judge also noted that Kim was 16—not 10 or 11—and was not sleepwalking. The deputies also sought qualified immunity, a legal protection that can shield government employees from civil liability when the law was not clearly established. Brimmer concluded that prior court decisions clearly established the relevant rights, so the deputies were not entitled to that protection at this stage. The case is Kim v. Kelly et al.