This month, the nation’s highest court shone a spotlight on Colorado’s typically low-profile Court of Appeals, agreeing to review a decision of the 22-member court for the second time in under a decade.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in granting appeals, occasionally gives the green-light to federal cases that come through the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals or state cases decided by the Colorado Supreme Court. But on Jan. 13, the justices announced they will hear People v. Counterman, a Court of Appeals decision from 2021 that found a man’s deluge of unwanted messages to a musician were not First Amendment-protected speech.

Before Counterman, the Supreme Court last agreed to review a Court of Appeals decision in 2017, in a high-profile case involving whether LGBTQ+ rights must give way to the religious beliefs of business owners: Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

A spokesperson for the Supreme Court said it does not keep statistics about the percentage of cases heard from state courts or from federal courts. However, the court has reviewed several decisions from Colorado’s highest court in the past decade.

In Nelson v. Colorado, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Colorado Supreme Court in 2018, ruling that the state cannot keep defendants’ restitution and fee payments after their convictions are overturned.

The court again reversed its state counterpart in the 2014 decision of Air Wisconsin Airlines Corp. v. Hoeper, which involved an airline’s immunity against a pilot’s defamation claims.

Finally, the U.S. Supreme Court again disagreed with the Colorado Supreme Court in the 2017 case of Peña-rodriguez v. Colorado, holding that trial judges, during postconviction proceedings, can look at a juror’s racially biased statements made during deliberations.