For the second time in two years, Justice Carlos A. Samour Jr. occupies an unusual position: Having his dissent in a Colorado Supreme Court case potentially forming the basis of U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

Earlier this week, the nation’s highest court accepted an appeal questioning whether plaintiffs may sue fossil fuel producers under state law for damages caused locally by climate change. By 5-2 last year, the state Supreme Court allowed the litigation out of Boulder County to proceed, reasoning that federal law did not block such claims.

Samour authored the dissent, in which he used the words “chaos” or “chaotic” five times to describe the majority’s decision.

“Given the number of local municipalities throughout the country that have already brought claims like those advanced by Boulder, given that more and more municipalities are joining this trend, and given further that a number of courts have now ruled that such claims may be prosecuted,” he wrote, “I respectfully urge the Supreme Court to take up this issue.”

If the U.S. Supreme Court sees eye-to-eye with Samour, it would be an unusual repeat occurrence.

In March 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a decision by the Colorado Supreme Court that had concluded that then-candidate Donald Trump was constitutionally disqualified from appearing on the state’s ballot for engaging in insurrection.

Although three of Colorado’s justices wrote separate dissents, Samour’s was the most detailed and contained an argument the U.S. Supreme Court eventually adopted for its ruling: Congress, not the states, is empowered to enforce the disqualification mechanism against federal candidates.

In response to questions from Colorado Politics, multiple U.S. Supreme Court observers did not know whether another state justice had recently occupied Samour’s position of authoring a dissenting opinion that could potentially lay the groundwork for a Supreme Court majority decision.

“It seems very unlikely to be true of a judge on another state court lately because in recent years the Court has granted cert (review) in few state court cases, mostly filling its docket from lower federal court cases,” Cornell law Prof. Michael C. Dorf wrote in an email.

Samour, an immigrant from El Salvador and a former prosecutor, has been a member of the state’s highest court for almost eight years. Previously, he was a trial judge in the Denver suburbs, where he presided over the high-profile criminal case of the man who murdered 12 people in an Aurora movie theater.

To date, Samour’s most significant contributions on the state Supreme Court have tended to fall in the area of criminal law. He wrote a landmark 2019 decision clarifying how judges should evaluate the proportionality of sentences for constitutional violations, and a 2021 opinion directing trial judges and prosecutors to follow the exact requirements of Colorado’s crime victim restitution law.

Jay Strandjord, one of Samour’s first clerks on the Supreme Court, said he got to observe Samour and other appellate judges during his various clerkships between 2016 and 2019.

“He approaches every case with extraordinary care, and he’s tireless in his work ethic,” said Strandjord. “I do not have any opinions about any influence he might have or whether he appreciates it. All I can really say is that at the end of the day, Justice Samour simply cares about getting it right.”