A Carbondale man whose high-profile Christmas Eve 2020 arrest at the local City Market grocery store sparked community outrage has filed a race discrimination lawsuit against the grocery chain.

Michael Francisco has retained the civil rights law firm Killmer, Lane & Newman, LLP of Denver. The firm on Wednesday filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Denver.

The case is based on Carbondale City Market staff and Carbondale police forcibly removing Francisco from the store on Dec. 24, 2020, because of his race, Francisco’s attorney, Michael Fairhurst, said in a news release.

Francisco is Black and wears a Rastafarian headdress called a tam. He is well-known in Carbondale for his Sunday reggae music show on community radio station KDNK.

Francisco said the police encounter and his subsequent arrest after he was wrestled to the floor by police officers in the self-checkout area was a gross misunderstanding and a matter of miscommunication when an employee at the outdoor gas station kiosk mistook his hand gesture as a threat and alerted store management before he went inside the main store.

He maintained afterward that the situation could have easily been handled without involving police. The incident, including resisting arrest and disorderly conduct charges that were ultimately dropped by the town’s prosecuting attorney, was a violation of his civil rights, the lawsuit claims.

“This is a case with facts that could have come straight out of the Jim Crow era,” Fairhurst said in the release. “If Mr. Francisco was white, he would have had a completely ordinary shopping experience at the Carbondale City Market on Christmas Eve 2020.

“But, because Mr. Francisco is Black, City Market staff and the Carbondale police forcibly ejected him from the store in handcuffs.”

Fairhurst said Francisco did nothing that could have conceivably justified his removal from the store, and that Francisco’s abuse at the defendants’ hands was especially traumatizing. He noted that Francisco had never been convicted of a criminal offense in his life.

The lawsuit names City Market and its parent company, Kroger, as well as an employee at the time, Tia Walker, who allegedly instigated the confrontation. The town and Carbondale Police are not named in the suit.

“All I wanted to do was buy juice and soup at City Market,” Francisco said in the release. “I had the same right to a peaceful shopping trip as the many white customers in the store who City Market staff and the Carbondale police left alone.”

Police body camera and store surveillance video obtained by the Post-Independent at the time showed Francisco being approached by police officers in the checkout area and appearing to be caught off guard. After repeatedly saying he did nothing wrong and that it was all a misunderstanding, Francisco refuses to show his ID, prompting police to restrain him.

“I did nothing wrong that night,” he added. “As a Black man, I know racism is still alive and well in America. Yet even I never expected to be forcibly kicked out of a grocery store while I was trying to buy my groceries because of my race. It is heartbreaking.”

Following his arrest, numerous members of the public showed up at his municipal court hearings and held rallies outside Carbondale Town Hall in the spring of 2021, calling for the charges to be dropped.

The lawsuit seeks monetary and other compensatory damages, and demands a jury trial.

City Market officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.