The Gazette publishes Todd Starr’s argument that Colorado’s Western Slope has long lacked meaningful representation on the state’s appellate courts, even though the region carries a huge share of Colorado’s water, energy, agriculture, federal land, and rural legal consequences. Starr notes that the Court of Appeals has 22 judges, the Supreme Court has seven, and Western Slope experience has been rare enough that one retirement can nearly erase the region’s presence from the bench.
That is not a pity party. It is a representation problem. The Western Slope is treated like a scenic prop with cattle when Denver needs campaign backdrops, recreation, water, electrons, or a place to dump the consequences of Front Range politics. Then everyone acts confused when people west of the Divide notice they are supplying the resources, absorbing the mandates, and watching the decisions get made somewhere else.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Starr argues the Western Slope is roughly a third of Colorado and holds the headwaters of the Colorado River system, much of the state’s federal land burden, and a disproportionate share of energy, water, and agriculture. In Denver, that apparently qualifies you to be lectured by people who discovered rural Colorado during a ski weekend.
- The article quotes incoming Court of Appeals Chief Judge Ted C. Tow III saying, “We don’t have a rural perspective on our court.” That is refreshingly direct. Usually the system hides the obvious under six layers of committee language and a plaque.
- Starr points to federal Judge Gordon Gallagher’s appointment in Grand Junction as an example of the federal judiciary recognizing Western Slope geography in practice, not just in theory. The federal system looked at the map and found Grand Junction. Colorado’s state system keeps squinting east of the Divide.
- The piece argues Western Slope legal issues are not abstract law-school hypotheticals. Water rights, federal land, energy development, agriculture, grazing, and state power collisions are livelihoods, tax bases, family operations, and county budgets.
- Starr does not demand quotas or guaranteed outcomes. He argues geographic representation should be an explicit consideration in appellate appointments. Competence matters. But place matters too, and a system that pretends geography has no effect on judgment is kidding itself with a robe on.
My Bottom Line
Courts need legitimacy. Legitimacy takes a hit when one region keeps supplying the water, land, energy, agriculture, and consequences while another region supplies the decision-makers.
That does not mean judges east of the Divide are villains. It does not mean a Western Slope judge would always decide Western Slope cases “right.” That is not the point. The point is that lived experience shapes what people notice, what they assume, and what they understand without needing a 40-page brief and a field trip.
Weld County can relate. More and more, the same metro-area appetite that has treated the Western Slope like a resource pantry is turning its sights on Weld. Water, energy, agriculture, land use, transportation, growth, air rules, housing pressure, local control. The pattern is familiar: Denver needs what you produce, dislikes how you produce it, regulates you from a distance, then congratulates itself for compassion.
A judge does not need to be from the Western Slope to be fair. But a state that almost never elevates Western Slope experience should stop pretending geography is irrelevant. People who live with the fallout should not be permanent spectators when institutions decide the rules. That is not regional whining. That is basic representative sanity.
Source: The Gazette
Share your thoughts...