Welcome to Court Crawl, Colorado Politics’ roundup of news from the third branch of government.

The state Supreme Court has accepted multiple appeals on consequential topics, plus the federal appeals court based in Denver advanced competing views about the propriety of hearing a marijuana-related lawsuit in the first place.

Three appeals

•  Colorado’s justices will hear two appeals concerning the state’s open meetings law, which lays out requirements for how public bodies are to make decisions in public. A decade ago, the Court of Appeals recognized the ability of governments to “cure” their open meetings violations by redoing their action at a proper meeting, so long as they don’t rubber stamp the original decision. The concept of a cure doesn’t explicitly appear in the law, however, and the Supreme Court will decide whether to approve of its existence.

•  The Supreme Court may also intervene in a lawsuit that seeks to hold ExxonMobil liable for the financial impacts of climate change in Boulder County. It’s one of a number of similar lawsuits across the country against fossil fuel companies, but the court will address whether the novel claims here can proceed according to state law.

Heard on appeal

•  The Court of Appeals deemed unconstitutional a provision of Colorado’s campaign finance law — unique to this state — that requires ballot issue advocacy groups to disclose the name of their registered agent on their election communications.

•   Judge Sueanna P. Johnson warned in a concurring opinion that medical terminology like “abusive” or “nonaccidental” head trauma may improperly influence juries to convict defendants in child abuse cases, even if current precedent allows doctors to testify using those phrases.

•  The Court of Appeals clarified that trial judges who review the decisions of magistrates can only accept, reject or modify the magistrates’ work. If there need to be further proceedings on the issue, the trial judges need to do it themselves.

• Judges in Jefferson County and Denver issued faulty jury instructions or evidentiary rulings that prompted the Court of Appeals to overturn two defendants’ criminal convictions.

• A Douglas County judge misunderstood the scope of Colorado’s “rape shield” law and excluded crucial information that could have helped the defense make its argument, the Court of Appeals ruled.

•  Two Boulder detectives interrogated a man about an attempted sex assault despite only having court authorization to obtain his DNA and photographs. Consequently, the Court of Appeals ordered a new trial. In an unusual breach of decorum, one of the judges who heard the appeal, Anthony J. Navarro, laughed at the Colorado Attorney General’s Office’s lawyer when she claimed during oral arguments the defendant could have simply closed his door on the detectives as they were standing there with a court order. Navarro repeatedly apologized for his reaction.

In federal news

•  By 2-1, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit concluded a judge will need to review whether the $6.4 million he ordered one man to pay to another for a commercial marijuana partnership would require breaking federal law (because, after all, cannabis is still illegal at that level). The dissenting judge’s response was essentially: Of course it will. It’s cannabis.

•  The 10th Circuit upheld the convictions of a doctor who fraudulently obtained more than a quarter million dollars in pandemic aid from the government.

•  A Black postal worker failed to sufficiently allege that a White supervisor’s offensive conduct rose to the level of a civil rights violation, the 10th Circuit ruled.

•  The U.S. Senate passed the JUDGES Act, which would give Colorado two more federal trial judges over the next decade as part of a larger package to address rising caseloads nationally.

Miscellaneous proceedings

•  The proponents of an effort to oust state Republican Party chair Dave Williams have asked an Arapahoe County judge to reconsider his decision temporarily blocking them from holding a meeting to vote on the matter.

•  A defendant on trial for multiple serious felony offenses in Denver jumped to his death at the courthouse, injuring two people in the process.