Since the start of the Colorado Supreme Court’s 2025-2026 term in September, Chief Justice Monica M. Márquez has now exceeded her average number of dissenting opinions, with more than four months remaining before the court breaks for the summer.

The Supreme Court has issued 27 new opinions since Labor Day, which is roughly in line with its past two terms. In addition, a 28th decision resulted in a rare 3-3 split, meaning no opinion was issued. Márquez has been in the minority nine times, for one-third of the cases. That number includes six dissents she has authored herself and three others she has joined.

In the Supreme Court’s prior term from 2024-2025, Márquez was in dissent only three times total. During the 2023-2024 term, Márquez authored six dissenting opinions and joined another two dissents, for a total of eight.

However, more than four months remain in the current term. The number of decisions released in the latter half of the term will likely exceed the number released so far, with split decisions continuing to surface.

Geoffrey Klingsporn, an attorney who tracks the opinions of the Colorado Supreme Court, compiles statistics about each member’s decision-making for the annual appellate event in the spring. According to his 12 years of data, Márquez has historically joined 7.5 dissents per year and was the author of four on average.

Although Klingsporn’s analysis uses a different annual reporting window than Colorado Politics uses for its statistical review, his data indicated that Márquez and Justices Brian D. Boatright and Richard L. Gabriel have dissented with roughly the same frequency between January 2022 and June 2025. So far this term, Gabriel has dissented three times and Boatright has dissented once.

Márquez’s nine dissents since September included the following:

• A criminal case involving the “involuntary intoxication” defense, where she found the majority’s interpretation too restrictive
• A postconviction criminal case, in which she believed the defendant’s claims of constitutionally deficient representation had merit
• A civil lawsuit against Xcel Energy, where she concluded the state’s regulator could limit a utility’s liability for injuries to non-customers
• A pair of open meetings lawsuits, where she disagreed with the majority about who is entitled to attorney fees for pursuing violations
• An attorney regulation case in which she believed the state’s disciplinary judge should have recused
• A crime victim restitution case, where she concluded money used by police in undercover drug operations can be recovered through sentencing
• A criminal case in which she believed prosecutors must prove a debit card is functional in order to convict a defendant of unlawfully possessing someone else’s financial device
• A criminal case in which she argued U.S. Supreme Court precedent rendered a piece of Colorado’s three-strikes law unconstitutional

In comparison to her frequency in dissent, the chief justice has only authored one majority opinion since September.

Justice Maria E. Berkenkotter is the only member of the court who has not been in the minority at all this term.