Jessica Calderon, the Denver employee who won a temporary restraining order preventing the City and County of Denver from terminating her amid the 2025 citywide layoffs, appeared in federal court today for a preliminary injunction hearing in her lawsuit against the city and the Office of Mayor Mike Johnston.

Calderon, who served as director of operations and innovation in the Mayor’s Office of Social Equity & Innovation, alleges she and other city employees were “deliberately targeted” as the city shed workers in August 2025 to remedy its looming financial woes.

After nearly six hours of testimony on Tuesday from Calderon and her former bosses Ben Sanders, the city’s chief equity officer, and Brian Firooz, the deputy director of the Mayor’s Office of Social Equity & Innovation, both of whom are also named as defendants, U.S. District Court Judge Nina Y. Wang took the matter “under advisement,” adding that the court would issue a written order “as soon as possible.”

Both Calderon and Firooz recorded conversations with each other, and transcripts of those conversations were submitted as evidence, along with select audio clips.

Parts of Calderon’s performance evaluations were also read in court, citing her service contributions to the city, as well as instances of failing to return emails and phone calls in a timely manner and difficulty receiving feedback.

Calderon, in her lawsuit filed in June 2025, sued the Office of the Mayor and her former bosses, citing political retaliation in violation of the First Amendment and sex discrimination.

Calderon alleges that she was denied promotions that were given to male colleagues and that Sanders repeatedly confronted her about her connection to Latinos United Neighbors Association (LUNA) and its founder, Lisa Calderón, who ran against Johnston in the 2023 mayoral race.

The two women are not related.

Sanders denied that he had openly confronted her about her connections, but rather that he had offered her advice on the “politics and optics” of associating with one of Johnston’s most outspoken critics.

Calderon, who has been on administrative leave since Aug. 18, told The Denver Gazette she refused to sign city paperwork in exchange for severance and benefits. 

“I was not going to sign away my rights,” she said. 

According to court documents, the city expressed concerns about “copycat litigation disrupting the city’s fiscal policy,” which the judge called “speculative.” 

“Even if any such lawsuits arise, courts do not simply grant injunctive relief to any employee facing layoff — future litigants would still need to satisfy the factors for preliminary injunctive relief based on specific facts,” Wang wrote. “And insofar as Defendants claim that granting Plaintiff a temporary injunction against her termination would ‘erode’ the city’s ‘fiscal integrity,’ they have not submitted evidence to substantiate that claim.”