A man who made dietary supplements and once ran for the Montana governor’s office sued federal prison officials, claiming they segregated the television rooms in an Englewood prison.
Toby McAdam served four months in the low-security Federal Correctional Institution in Englewood for violating court orders requiring him to stop selling dietary supplements labeled with unsubstantiated health benefit claims.
“Each unit has a TV room for African-Americans, a room for Hispanics, a separate room for whites and Native Americans … I’m serious, segregated,” McAdam said in the handwritten, 12-page lawsuit that he filed in U.S. District Court in Denver.
Greg Staut, a prison spokesman, said the facility includes multiple television rooms and each is dedicated to a different type of programming such as news or sports. But the rooms aren’t separated by race and anyone can use any of them, he said.
Thursday in a telephone interview, McAdam said administrators “should just go in there and integrate.”
U.S. District Judge Lewis T. Babcock dismissed McAdam’s lawsuit Monday, because McAdam failed to pay the $400 filing fee. McAdam filed his lawsuit in March and said he plans to refile it.
In 2010, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found McAdam made unsubstantiated medical claims on the labels of supplements and drugs sold by his company, Risingsun Health, according to website Food Safety News.
He agreed to both a court-imposed consent decree and a second court order to stop selling the drugs and supplements, but in 2015 he pleaded guilty to criminal contempt of court charge for violating the court orders. A federal judge in Montana sentenced him to four months in prison that he served in Englewood.
McAdam ran for Montana governor on the Reform Party ticket in 2000, according to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.
