BRIEF
When Gov. Jared Polis announced the appointment of W. Eric Kuhn to the Colorado Court of Appeals, the governor highlighted that the appointment was made during Pride Month.
The announcement came Thursday. “With this announcement at the beginning of pride month, the diversity of the Court of Appeals is increased with the addition of their only LGBT judge,” Polis, who in 2018 became the nation’s first openly gay man elected governor, said in a statement.
Not so fast.
Kuhn, it turns out, will in fact be at least the second LGBT judge sitting on the 22-member court.
Judge Anthony J. Navarro is also a member of the LGBT community, as the governor’s office acknowledged by Friday. Navarro was appointed to the court in 2012 and is a former Colorado LGBT Bar Association board member.
On Friday the governor’s office sent out a corrected announcement, which said that with Kuhn’s appointment “the diversity of the Court of Appeals is increased with the addition of one of the only LGBT judges” on the court.
The court hears cases appealed out of Colorado district courts, and its own rulings are subject to review by only one other judicial authority in the state, the Colorado Supreme Court.
Kuhn’s appointment was occasioned by the retirement of Judge Diana Terry. He is a senior assistant attorney general in the Colorado attorney general’s office, serving most recently in the office’s Health Care Unit.
“Eric has been indispensable to the State since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, providing thoughtful and measured legal counsel on a wide variety of public health and constitutional issues,” Polis said in his statement.
Kuhn earned a bachelor’s degree from Colorado College in 1995 and a law degree from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law in 2006. He previously worked at the Law Offices of Bradley J. Frigon.
