The citizen-led performance commission that provides guidance to voters about whether to retain members of Colorado’s second-highest court raised concerns by judges and attorneys that Judge Elizabeth L. Harris sometimes struggles with releasing opinions promptly.

Harris, who joined the Court of Appeals in 2015 and who will appear alongside five other appellate judges on the November ballot, received a unanimous recommendation last week of “meets performance standards” from the commission of lawyers and non-attorneys that evaluated her work. All attorneys and 91% of judges who responded to surveys agreed that she met the standards for a judge, and the commission’s retention narrative called her “well-prepared,” “respectful” and a “valuable member” of the court.

However, lawyers “noted the length of time required for Judge Harris to issue an opinion as a weakness,” wrote commissioners. “Judges also noted Judge Harris’ timeliness in issuing decisions as a weakness.”

Her last retention narrative in 2018 also raised a lack of timeliness, while stating Harris “has shown substantial improvement” in that area.

The 22-member Court of Appeals issues around 1,700 opinions every year, only a small portion of which the state Supreme Court accepts for review. Judges sit in panels of three, known as “divisions,” and are rotated through divisions multiple times per year.

Colorado Politics reviewed Harris’ participation across various divisions from August 2023 through July 2026, focusing on the appeals that received oral arguments. Although the majority of Court of Appeals cases are decided without oral arguments, the time between argument and decision provided a uniform measurement to evaluate potential delay.

Over a three-year window, Harris participated in 64 oral arguments and authored decisions in 18 of those cases. As of Thursday, eight cases have yet to be decided, including five that were argued in 2025.

In the limited sample of Harris’ opinions, the median time from oral argument to opinion was 145 days. The mean time was 200 days, driven by a handful of decisions that she took close to, or more than, one year to release following arguments.

In one appeal implicating the monetary damages that insurance companies must pay for failing to respond to requests for policy information in the required window, oral arguments took place in September 2024. The three-judge division asked the litigants afterward to submit additional written arguments on specific points, which they did by the end of October. The docket was silent for nearly 17 months, until Harris released the opinion this March.

Colorado Politics also measured the time that it took other judges on Harris’ divisions to release opinions after those same arguments. While the sample sizes were even smaller, the judge with the next-largest gap between arguments and decisions — Timothy J. Schutz with six opinions — had a median of only 69 days and a mean of 57 days.

Colorado Politics invited Harris to comment on the findings, methodology or the observations of the performance commission. Harris declined to speak, citing the code of judicial conduct’s prohibition on campaign activity.

The court’s clerk, Tiffany Mortier, noted that the performance commission had otherwise found Harris’ opinions to be clear, well-written and “reasonably timely.”

“In my view, a simple comparison of the average time to decision for individual judges does not always present a complete picture. Cases differ from each other, presenting a widely disparate number of issues of varying complexity,” she said. “And every authoring judge undertakes an individualized, case-by-case determination of the time it will take to craft a thorough, well-reasoned, and well-written opinion for that particular case.”

On other performance metrics related to decision-making, Harris received high ratings from lawyers and judges.

Of the five attorneys who submitted survey responses, they gave Harris a perfect score in every category except timeliness, where she received a score of 3.2 out of 4.0. For the 20 judges who rated Harris on timeliness, they gave her an average of 2.2 out of 4.0.

Some lawyers declined to comment on the record about the decisions they received from Harris or did not respond to questions, including a family law attorney who called out the “significant delay in issuing this Opinion” in a post-decision motion.

Others defended Harris’ handling of cases.

“Thoughtfulness is better than speediness. Judge Harris is one of the smartest and most conscientious judges I’ve encountered anywhere. This is reflected in her opinions. While statistics may show that she takes more time to craft her opinions, I don’t notice this in my practice,” said Nelson A. Waneka, whose clients partially prevailed in a decision that Harris issued 408 days after oral arguments. “I’ve won and lost appeals where Judge Harris drafted the majority opinion. In every circumstance the time it took for an opinion to issue was of minimal significance to the grand scheme of things.”