U.S. Supreme Court Reiterates That Not All Procedural Time Limits Are Jurisdictional
The U.S. Supreme Court’s first decision of the current term involves a suit alleging age and sex discrimination in the workplace. But the Court addressed only an important, though technical, issue about deadlines for appellate filings. Hamer v. Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago, No. 16-658, was argued on October 10. The Supreme Court quickly turned around a unanimous decision on November 8, 2017, authored by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Charlaine Hamer brought a federal lawsuit for employment discrimination. The trial court granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants. Under 28 U.S.C. 2107(a) and Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a)(1)(A), Ms. Hamer had 30 days from the entry of judgment to notice an appeal. But a few days before the 30-day deadline, Ms. Hamer’s attorneys sought both to withdraw from the case due to strategic differences with the client and requested a 60-day extension of the appeal deadline so that Ms. Hamer could find new counsel for her appeal. The trial court granted both motions. Represented by new counsel, Ms. Hamer filed her appeal shortly before the extended deadline.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, however, questioned whether it had jurisdiction over Ms. Hamer’s appeal and asked the parties to brief that issue. As the appellate court noted, Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a)(5)(C) limits extensions of time for noticing an appeal to no more than 30 days after the initial deadline. Federal statute—28 U.S.C. 2107(c)—also addresses extensions, but it does not set an outer limit for their length. Here, the district court had granted Ms. Hamer a 60-day extension.
The difference between the statutory text (which does not limit the length of an extension) and Rule 4(a)(5)(C) (which does) has divided appellate courts. Two circuits had deemed the limitation in Rule 4(a)(5)(C) a mandatory claims-processing rule, which means it must be followed but can be waived or forfeited such that there are circumstances where an appeal could be timely even if filed during an extension longer than the Rule countenances. Three circuits had deemed the limitation jurisdictional, which means they considered it an absolute bar to proceeding with an appeal filed after the outside limit of the rule, regardless of circumstances. In Ms. Hamer’s case, the Seventh Circuit joined the jurisdictional side of this split.
The Supreme Court clarified that the 30-day limitation on extensions in Rule 4(a)(5)(C) is a mandatory claims-processing rule, not a jurisdictional limit. The Court reiterated that limits prescribed by congressionally enacted statutes mark jurisdictional boundaries, whereas those prescribed by judicially crafted rules present mandatory claims-processing rules. Here, because the statute governing the timing of appeals—28 U.S.C. 2107—does not itself limit the length of a potential extension, the 30-day restriction in Rule 4(a)(5)(C) is not jurisdictional.
While 28 U.S.C. 2107 had, prior to 1991, limited extensions of the deadline to notice an appeal to 30 days, the Supreme Court refused to speculate that Congress’s deletion of that limit was inadvertent. See Hamer, slip op. at 7-8. And though a prior Supreme Court decision had stated that “the taking of an appeal within the prescribed time is ‘mandatory and jurisdictional,’” Bowles v. Russell, 551 U.S. 205, 207 (2009) (quoting Griggs v. Provident Consumer Discount Co., 459 U.S. 56, 61 (1982) (per curiam)), the Hamer Court explained that the word “jurisdictional” is now more carefully and precisely used. See Hamer, slip op. at 9-10.
What’s next? Ms. Hamer’s case goes back to the Seventh Circuit. And future appellate litigants and their attorneys should proceed cautiously, recognizing that the rule allowing an extension of up to thirty days to notice an appeal is a mandatory claims-processing rule, not a jurisdictional limitation.
Law clerk Laura Lamansky assisted with researching and writing this blog post.
