From amendment to enforcement.
A ban on paper becomes a ban in practice through records: audits, filings, petitions, and rulings. Eight states removed the exception. This page is what happened next, and what the network does about it.
What a removal has to contain.
The removals taught the network what a ban has to contain to be enforced.
Colorado struck its exception in 2018 and waited until 2026 for the first order. A bare sentence abolishes nothing a court can enforce.
Alabama and Colorado both pleaded immunity against their own amendments. The waiver goes in the constitution.
The locked door is not the question. What the State does with the person behind it is.
Pay is not a defense. Compensation, in any amount, does not make labor voluntary.
California's Proposition 6 went to the voters under that title in 2024 and lost.
A statute can be repealed in the next budget. Only an amendment reaches the clause.
The rulings.
| Case | Jurisdiction | Citation | What it decided |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mortis v. Polis | Colorado | Denver District Court, Case No. 2022CV30421, February 13, 2026 (Wallace, J.). 61 pages. | Colorado Department of Corrections' coercive labor practices held unconstitutional under the Colorado Constitution, Article II, Section 26, as amended by the voters in 2018. The first ruling to give a removal operational force. Decided as involuntary servitude; the court was never asked to say what slavery means. |
| Stanley v. Ivey | Alabama | Alabama Court of Civil Appeals, CL-2024-0710, December 19, 2025. | Alabama removed its exception in 2022. The State pleaded sovereign immunity against its own amendment, and the appeal lost because the penalties alleged were held not to be involuntary servitude. Why the remedy and the immunity waiver go in the text. |
| Ruelas v. County of Alameda | California | 15 Cal. 5th 968 (2024). | People never convicted worked unpaid for a private contractor in a county jail, sued for minimum wage, and lost unanimously because a statute still stood. What keeps wage law out of jails is statutes, not the exception. A statute is not an amendment. |
Each case name opens the opinion. Every case in the Research Library.
Five lines of attack, each building its own record.
Plea disclosure
No plea form the network has audited tells the defendant that conviction suspends the protection against slavery. New Jersey's petition, filed April 17, 2026, is the model.
Labor and wage claims
Matched filings with the state labor department and the federal Wage and Hour Division. Two agencies answering the same facts leave a record.
Juvenile waivers
Children transferred to adult court inherit the adult status on conviction. The transfer statutes are the target.
Disabled defendants
Where the law already limits what punishment may reach, the exception's reach is limited too.
The remaining ownership powers
Every power the audit finds exercised is a grassroots trigger. Not every fight is in a courtroom.
Is anyone told?
The plea disclosure petition was filed with the New Jersey Supreme Court Criminal Practice Committee on April 17, 2026, by the Coalition to End Slavery NJ and the network. It asks that the plea form tell the defendant what conviction suspends.
Measured on the State's own rules.
The Constitutional Abolition Enforcement Standards measure the ownership powers against the ratified definition. Each instrument reports on its own axis, and the findings are never blended into one number. A score of 1 in any domain triggers grassroots action. A score of 2 or above triggers a litigation referral.
Findings are published for New Jersey and Minnesota. Minnesota's custody finding is provisional.
The remedy goes in the constitution.
The model amendment carries the definition, the remedy, and the immunity waiver in its own text, so enforcement does not wait on a later statute.
Cite this page. Abolish Slavery National Network, “Enforcement After Removing the Punishment Exception,” https://abolishslavery.us/enforcement.html.