Colorado's appellate courts published three HOA opinions in twenty months
Colorado's appellate courts published three HOA opinions in twenty months
2026-09-10 · Colorado · Courts
Between January 2025 and September 2026, the Colorado Court of Appeals published three opinions with a community association as a named party. The Colorado Supreme Court did not construe CCIOA once. Every other Colorado association appeal in that period was decided in an unpublished opinion — not citable as precedent, and not publicly available to read.1
That absence is the story, and it has a practical consequence: a Colorado board looking for appellate authority on the questions it actually faces will not find it.
What the census covered
All 88 weekly Court of Appeals case-announcement sheets from January 2, 2025 to September 3, 2026, and all 186 published-opinion PDFs linked from them, full text searched. All 72 Supreme Court announcement sheets from January 13, 2025 to September 8, 2026 — opinions, certiorari grants, denials and original proceedings. And all 384 Colorado-origin Tenth Circuit dispositions issued in the window.
The published association opinions, in full
2025 COA 35, Miller v. Bullock (March 27, 2025) — an HOA that lost by default could not obtain interlocutory review.
2025 COA 37, the Court of Appeals decision in the Twin Shores premises-liability case, now before the Supreme Court on certiorari.
2026 COA 58, Elk Creek Ranch Owners Association (July 9, 2026) — fee-award finality, contractual fee-shifting and lodestar methodology.
Plus 2026 COA 57, where a property owners' association was a nominal defendant in a mineral-rights and quiet-title appeal that turned on procedural finality.
At the Supreme Court: one decision involving a community association — 2026 CO 54, the Roxborough Park condemnation-discovery case — and one certiorari grant, in Twin Shores.
The verified negatives, and each is checkable
No Colorado appellate decision in the window construes any CCIOA section as its holding. Full-text search of all 186 published Court of Appeals opinions and 36 Supreme Court opinions found CCIOA discussed substantively in exactly two places: the Twin Shores Court of Appeals decision, and — as a description of the underlying claims rather than a holding — the Tenth Circuit's insurance decision in the Peaks owners' association case, which referenced C.R.S. 38-33.3-209.5.
No Colorado appellate decision on HOA assessment-lien foreclosure. Nothing construes C.R.S. 38-33.3-316 or the HB22-1137, HB24-1337 and HB25-1043 collection and foreclosure amendments. Given how much statutory change landed in that area, the courts have simply not spoken on it yet.
No Colorado appellate decision on association records inspection. Nothing construes C.R.S. 38-33.3-317 — the very section HB26-1099 amended in 2026.
No Colorado appellate decision on architectural control, design review, or an architectural committee's authority.
No Colorado appellate decision applying the business judgment rule to an HOA or COA board.
No Colorado appellate decision construing a short-term-rental covenant. The only published STR case, 2026 COA 20, is about a municipal regulatory fee and TABOR — holding that Breckenridge's charge on short-term rental licensees was a valid regulatory fee rather than a tax requiring a vote, even though it is revenue positive.
No merits ruling on whether an association owed a reasonable accommodation. The fair-housing activity in this period is all federal and all procedural: a removal and then an arbitration referral in the Highland Bridge Lofts case; a pleading-standards recommendation in a case where the association is not even a defendant; and a frivolousness dismissal under filing restrictions.
And no certiorari grant on any HOA question other than Twin Shores, verified across all 72 announcement sheets. Three association- or district-adjacent petitions were denied.
The twenty-plus appeals nobody can read
The census identified 22 unpublished Court of Appeals decisions with a community association or metropolitan district as a party — each marked “NOT PUBLISHED PURSUANT TO C.A.R. 35(e).”
Two consequences follow. They cannot be cited as precedent. And Colorado does not post unpublished Court of Appeals opinions publicly, so their holdings cannot be read at all — only the party names, docket numbers, judges and dispositions on the announcement sheets.
Several had dispositions that would be newsworthy if anyone could read them. A condominium association won a reversal against a unit owner and a property management company in a Summit County case announced May 28, 2026. Owners obtained reversals against associations in an Elbert County case announced November 6, 2025 and a Larimer County case announced May 14, 2026. An estate obtained a reversal against two Vail-area owners' associations in a case announced March 20, 2025.
Anyone who needs one can order it from the district court clerk or the Court of Appeals. Short of that, we will not characterise what any of them decided, and neither should anyone else.
Where Colorado association law actually changed
In the legislature, and comprehensively.
2025: HB25-1043 rewrote the collections and foreclosure choreography, effective October 1, 2025. HB25-1272 raised the owner-approval threshold for an association construction-defect action to 65% of allocated votes and required recoveries to be spent on repairs first. HB25-1182 made wildfire risk scores disclosable and appealable from July 1, 2026.
2026: HB26-1099 created a declarant 30-year reserve-study duty and a 45-day management-company records turnover rule with a $250-per-business-day penalty. HB26-1007 voids covenants unreasonably restricting plug-in solar from January 1, 2027. HB26-1045 made a complete prohibition of assistance animals presumptively discriminatory. SB26-189 brings automated decision-making duties to associations from January 1, 2027.
Every one of those is a statute. None has appellate construction, and given that the acts took effect on August 12, 2026, none will for some time.
Two research cautions worth preserving
The federal district court slice is a floor, not a census. The federal government's published-opinion collection carries only orders the district court designates for publication there — a small fraction of its written rulings. Other unreported District of Colorado association rulings in this window very likely exist.
And one widely circulated citation is more than a decade old. A law-firm alert titled to the effect that the Court of Appeals had resolved unanswered tolling and statute-of-repose questions under Colorado's construction-defect act concerns a 2012 line of cases, not a 2025 or 2026 decision. Relatedly, the one 2025 Colorado decision that touched the construction-defect statute of repose — 2025 COA 54 — expressly declined to reach it: “The district court has yet to make those findings. And we're not going to do so here.” The control exception remains unsettled.
Related Colorado HOA Topics
- Court of Appeals case announcements, Colorado Judicial Branch — the weekly sheets swept for this census ↩
- Supreme Court case announcements, Colorado Judicial Branch ↩
- Kritzer v. Qwest Corp., 2025 COA 54 (Colo. App. May 29, 2025) — the opinion expressly declining to reach the CDARA statute of repose ↩
- Dorotik v. Town of Breckenridge, 2026 COA 20 (Colo. App. Mar. 26, 2026) — the only published short-term rental decision, on municipal fees and TABOR ↩
- Colorado Court of Appeals case announcement sheet, May 28, 2026 — an example of an unpublished association reversal ↩
Stay on top of Colorado HOA law
Every week: new Colorado legislation, court rulings, and regulatory developments affecting condos, planned communities, and property managers. Free.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.