The Supreme Court held that the filing of a § 16 appeal from the denial of arbitration requires staying district court proceedings.
June 26, 2023
In Coinbase, Inc., v. Bielski, the Supreme Court held that district courts must stay proceedings on the merits once a party appeals from the denial of arbitration. The Court determined that 9 U.S.C. § 16—which authorizes these appeals—was enacted against Griggs v. Provident Consumer Discount Co.’s background principal that a district court loses control over all aspects of a case that are on appeal. And because the issue in an arbitration appeal is whether the case should proceed at all, the entirety of the case is effectively “on appeal.” So district courts must stay proceedings on the merits pending the appeal. The implication (though not expressly stayed by the Court) is that district courts lose jurisdiction over the merits and have no choice but to stay proceedings once an appeal is taken.
Justice Jackson dissented. She contended that the background principal against which Congress added § 16 was the opposite: no automatic stays due to interlocutory appeals. And Griggs means that the district court loses control over only the issue on appeal: arbitrability. She would have left the stay decision to the discretion of the district court.
I think I side with the dissent on this one. The majority gives several good reasons for why district courts might stay proceedings in many cases. But I’m not convinced that courts must grant a stay in all cases.
One other note: Coinbase did not touch on whether district courts may dismiss a case, rather than stay it, after ordering arbitration. That’s an issue that the Court has yet to resolve.
The Supreme Court held that a denied summary-judgment motion is sufficient to preserve a purely legal issue, even if the case proceeds to trial.
May 26, 2023
I’ve been following the circuit split over preserving purely legal issues via denied summary-judgment motions for some time. Now, the Supreme Court has finally resolved it. In Dupree v. Younger, the Court held that a denied summary-judgment motion preserves a purely legal issue. Litigants thus do not need to re-raise those issues in post-trial motions under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50.
It’s a solid resolution of the issue and removes a trap for the unwary. But going forward, counsel should be careful about whether a particular issue is purely legal. When in doubt, Rule 50 motions are probably the safest route.
A footnote in Shoop v. Twyford expanded the list of orders immediately appealable via the collateral-order doctrine to include “[t]ransportation orders issued under the All Writs Act.” In doing so, the Court invited more mischief involving the collateral-order doctrine.
June 22, 2022
In Tuesday’s Shoop v. Twyford, the Supreme Court reversed an order that required the state to transport a habeas petitioner from his prison to a hospital for medical testing. Before doing so, the Court had to explain how the Sixth Circuit had jurisdiction to immediately review this order. In a footnote, the Supreme Court said that the order was immediately appealable via the collateral-order doctrine. Dissenting, Justice Breyer would have held to the contrary. Also dissenting, Justice Gorsuch would have dismissed the case as improvidently granted, as the appellate-jurisdiction issue complicated the Court’s consideration of the transportation order.
I think the dissents have the better of the argument. Transportation orders like the one in Shoop are essentially discovery orders. And discovery orders like these are neither completely separate from the merits nor sufficiently important to warrant immediate review. Perhaps more troubling is Shoop’s use of the “conceptually distinct” test for separation. The majority said only that the transportation order was “conceptually distinct” from the merits—not that it was completely separate. This variation on the separateness requirement fudges the collateral-order requirements and risks both delayed district court proceedings and duplicative appellate review. The Court’s use of the test in Shoop—along with the Court’s brief, surface-level analysis—invites future mischief as litigants rely on Shoop to appeal other kinds of orders.
Defendants who invoke federal-officer or civil-rights removal can now appeal a remand and obtain review of all asserted grounds for removal.
May 19, 2021
In BP P.L.C. v. Mayor & City Council of Baltimore, the Supreme Court adopted the broad reading of the exceptions to 28 U.S.C. § 1447(d): if a defendant invokes the federal-officer removal statute (28 U.S.C. § 1442) or the civil-rights removal statute (28 U.S.C. § 1443) in removing a case, the defendant can appeal a remand order and obtain review of all proffered grounds for removal. In doing so, the Court rejected the narrow position that most courts of appeals had adopted, which limited remand appeals to the two expressly excepted grounds. Dissenting, Justice Sotomayor would have gone with that narrow reading.
I think the Court got it wrong. The majority’s opinion relies almost entirely on its conclusion that § 1447(d)’s text is plain. I disagree. The text doesn’t clearly say what to do when a case is removed on multiple grounds. While the text doesn’t answer the question, § 1447(d)’s context and purpose do. The Court should have read the statute to further the dual purposes of generally prohibiting remand appeals while allowing for review of certain, special issues.
The majority’s opinion also invites mischief. Defendants now have every incentive to raise any weak (though non-frivolous) argument they have for federal-officer or civil-rights removal. That way if the district court court remands the suit, these defendants can appeal and argue all of their grounds for removal. Indeed, it appears that a defendant taking such an appeal can abandon any argument for federal-officer or civil-rights removal and still obtain plenary review on appeal.
To prevent this mischief—and to preserve the policy of generally barring remand appeals—Congress should amend § 1447(d) to abrogate BP and narrow the scope of any appeals under that provision’s exceptions.
The Supreme Court shoehorned qualified-immunity appeals into the collateral-order doctrine. The fit isn’t good, and the consequences have been worse.
June 7, 2020
In Mitchell v. Forsyth, the Supreme Court held that government officials can immediately appeal from the denial of qualified immunity. Regardless of whether these denials should be appealable (a debatable point), the Court fudged the collateral-order doctrine to squeeze qualified-immunity appeals into it. The fit wasn’t—and never has been—pretty. And Mitchell spawned the unique appellate-procedure rules for qualified immunity, which have added difficulty, expense, and delay to civil-rights litigation. Those rules are in sore need of change.
The Supreme Court held that final orders of removal and denials of CAT relief are separate, and restrictions on reviewing final orders apply only to the former.
June 3, 2020
In Nasrallah v. Barr, the Supreme Court held that appellate courts can review factual findings that underly denials of protection under the Convention Against Torture, even if the petitioner has been convicted of a criminal offense. The Court distinguished between the two orders at issue in the immigration appeal: the final order of removal and the order denying protection under the Convention. The bar on reviewing factual findings applied only to the final order of removal. It did not apply to the separate order denying Convention protection, which tagged along with the final order of removal for appellate review. A dissent by Justice Thomas contended that immigration law’s “zipper clause” meant that the denial of Convention protection was reviewed as a part of the final order of removal. The bar on reviewing factual findings accordingly applied.
Note, the decision in Nasrallah marks the fifth and final appellate-jurisdiction case for this Supreme Court term.
Holguin-Hernandez held that defendants who ask for a particular sentence do not need to object after sentencing to preserve sentence-length issues for appeal.
February 27, 2020
In Holguin-Hernandez v. United States, the Supreme Court held that asking for a particular sentence before sentencing is enough to preserve a sentence-length error for appeal. Proposing the shorter sentence puts the parties and district court on notice of the defendant’s argument. Defendants thus do not need to object to that later-imposed, longer sentence to avoid plain error review. Requiring a subsequent objection serves no purpose and results in an unnecessarily high bar for appellate review of sentencing.
In Ritzen Group, the Supreme Court held that an order denying relief from bankruptcy’s automatic stay is final and appealable.
January 15, 2020
In Ritzen Group, Inc. v. Jackson Masonry, LLC, the Supreme Court held that litigants must immediately appeal the conclusive denial of relief from bankruptcy’s automatic stay. Under 28 U.S.C. § 158(a)(1), district courts have jurisdiction to hear appeals from “final judgments, orders, and decrees . . . of bankruptcy judges entered in cases and proceedings.” The Supreme Court reasoned that the adjudication of a motion to lift an automatic stay is a “proceeding.” The conclusive denial of that motion wraps up the proceedings to lift the stay. The denial is accordingly final, and parties must appeal within 14 days of the decision for the appeal to be timely.
Lamps Plus should have been decided on jurisdictional grounds: the district court should have stayed (not dismissed) the action, and a stay isn’t appealable.
May 23, 2019
In Lamps Plus, Inc. v. Varela, the Supreme Court held that a defendant seeking arbitration could appeal a district court decision that dismissed an action after ordering classwide arbitration (instead of the individual arbitration the defendant wanted). In doing so, the Court elided an issue that has split the courts of appeals for years: whether a district court must stay an action—not dismiss it—after ordering arbitration. Resolution of that issue affects appellate jurisdiction. And had the Court resolved it and held that stays are required, it would have had to dismiss Lamps Plus for lack of jurisdiction.