United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit

The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, cited as the 10th Circuit, is the federal appellate court for the district courts of Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming, a territory of about 560,625 square miles, roughly one seventh of the land mass of the country. It is composed of twelve active judges and sits at the Byron White U.S. Courthouse in Denver, Colorado. Congress created the present circuit in 1929 by splitting the overgrown Eighth Circuit, which had grown to thirteen states as twelve new states joined the Union between 1866 and 1912; Chief Justice William Howard Taft had urged the reorganization. An earlier Tenth Circuit authorized in 1863 disappeared after six years under the Judiciary Act of 1869. It is one of the thirteen United States courts of appeals.