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The Supreme Court recently amended Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 3(c). Before these amendments, several courts of appeals had used Rule 3(c)’s order-designation requirement to limit the scope of an appeal. The amendments—which were a necessary fix to a bad misreading of Rule 3(c)—became effective December 1, 2021. The Supreme Court’s order adopting the amendments said that the new rule would “govern in all proceedings in appellate cases thereafter commenced and, insofar as just and practicable, all proceedings then pending.”…

Last week, the Ninth Circuit heard an immediate appeal from an unsuccessful challenge to an indictment. The defendant contended that the Juvenile Delinquency Act barred his prosecution as an adult. The Ninth Circuit held that the defendant could immediately appeal this decision via the collateral-order doctrine.

In another decision, the Ninth Circuit addressed the relation forward of a notice of appeal.…

There are only two decisions to discuss from last week. The Fifth Circuit held that it could review an order that (among other things) remanded a claim to an administrative agency. Because the district court was done with the case, the decision was a final one. And the D.C. Circuit granted a petition to appeal under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(f).…

I was on spring break last week and took a break from the weekly roundup. But I’m back with decisions and developments from the past two weeks (February 27–March 12). And there were several decisions of note.

Two courts dismissed appeals based on close textual readings of jurisdictional statutes. A divided Eleventh Circuit held that it lacked jurisdiction to review sua sponte CAFA remands.…

The Class Action Fairness Act (often referred to as “CAFA”) permits the removal of certain class actions brought in state court. CAFA includes a special appellate provision—28 U.S.C. § 1453(c)(1)—which gives the courts of appeals discretion to review a district court order “granting or denying a motion to remand a class action to the State court from which it was removed.”…

28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1) gives the courts of appeals jurisdiction to immediately review many district court decisions involving injunctive relief. But § 1292(a)(1)’s text includes an important qualifier. It applies to “[i]nterlocutory orders of the district courts.” Normally this qualifier does little work. After all, most (if not nearly all) § 1292(a)(1) appeals involve injunctions issued by a district court.…

One requirement for appeal via the collateral-order doctrine is that the district court’s order be effectively unreviewable in an appeal after a final judgment. A prime candidate for satisfying this unreviewability requirement are immunities from suit. If a defense protects a litigant from the burdens and uncertainties of trial, it must be vindicated immediately if it is to be vindicated at all.…

Last week saw a few cases of note. The Seventh Circuit held that an order requiring an insurance company to defend its insured was an appealable injunction. The Sixth Circuit limited a sovereign-immunity appeal to sovereign-immunity issues, refusing to address standing or municipal liability. The Sixth Circuit also split on the extent to which defendants raised arguments within the court’s jurisdiction in a qualified-immunity appeal.…

After taking last week off from the roundup, I’m back with a two-week edition. The Fourth Circuit split on whether it could extend pendent appellate jurisdiction over orders directing arbitration. The First Circuit determined that a district court’s criticism of attorneys was not sufficiently related to a formal sanction to be appealable.…

The general rule for appealing interlocutory arbitration orders is pretty straightforward. Under 9 U.S.C. § 16, orders that refuse to direct arbitration under the Federal Arbitration Act are immediately appealable. Orders that direct arbitration aren’t. But what if an order directs arbitration on some claims but not on others?…