The Week in Federal Appellate Jurisdiction: October 4–10, 2020
There’s little to report from last week.
The Ninth Circuit on Modified Injunctions
The only decision of note was Flores v. Barr, in which the Ninth Circuit discussed its jurisdiction to hear an appeal from a district court’s ongoing supervision of a consent decree.
Simplifying a bit, Flores involved an immigration-related consent decree that requires (among other things) that the government transfer apprehended minors to licensed programs within three days. After an independent monitor reported that the government was using hotels to house apprehended minors, the district court ordered the government to stop.
The government then appealed. It also asked the Ninth Circuit to stay the district court’s order. And in seeking the stay, the government argued that appellate jurisdiction was proper under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1) because the district court had effectively modified an injunction.
The Ninth Circuit disagreed. It determined that the district court’s order required the government to take actions that were already required of it under the consent decree. With no modification of an injunction, there was no jurisdiction for the government’s appeal. So a stay was not warranted; the government was unlikely to succeed in its appeal.
Flores v. Barr, 2020 WL 5951115 (9th Cir. Oct. 4, 2020), available at the Ninth Circuit and Westlaw.
Cert Denied in Hinson v. Bias
Also of note, the Supreme Court denied cert in Hinson v. Bias. The petition contended that the Eleventh Circuit exceeded its limited jurisdiction in a qualified-immunity appeal and made its own assessment of the summary-judgment record. Given the frequency with which defendants flout those jurisdictional limits, I was hoping the Court would reiterate them.
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