Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-15-16133/USCOURTS-ca9-15-16133-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

CAROLYN JEWEL; ERIK KNUTZEN;

JOICE WALTON, on behalf of

themselves and all others similarly

situated,

Plaintiffs-Appellants,

and

TASH HEPTING; GREGORY HICKS,

Plaintiffs,

v.

NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY;

KEITH B. ALEXANDER, Director, in

his official and personal capacities;

MICHAEL V. HAYDEN, in his

personal Capacity; UNITED STATES

OF AMERICA; GEORGE W. BUSH,

President of the United States, in his

official and personal capacities;

RICHARD B. CHENEY, in his personal

capacity; DAVID S. ADDINGTON, in

his personal capacity; DEPARTMENT

OF JUSTICE; ALBERTO R. GONZALES,

in his personal capacity; JOHN D.

ASHCROFT, in his personal capacity;

JOHN M. MCCONNELL, Director of

National Intelligence, in his official

No. 15-16133

D.C. No. 

4:08-cv-04373-

JSW

OPINION

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2 JEWEL V. NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY

and personal capacities; JOHN D.

NEGROPONTE, in his personal

capacity; MICHAEL B. MUKASEY,

Attorney General; BARACK OBAMA;

ERIC H. HOLDER, JR., Attorney

General; DENNIS C. BLAIR,

Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of California

Jeffrey S. White, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted 

October 28, 2015—Pasadena, California

Filed December 18, 2015

Before: Michael Daly Hawkins, Susan P. Graber, and

M. Margaret McKeown, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge McKeown

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JEWEL V. NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY 3

SUMMARY*

Jurisdiction / Rule 54(b) Certification

The panel dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction

because the appeal did not meet the requirements of Fed. R.

Civ. P. 54(b) certification, and remanded to the district court

for further proceedings.

The panel concluded that Rule 54(b) certification was not

warranted because the question of whether the copying and

searching of plaintiff’s Internet communications violated the

Fourth Amendment – which was the only issue that the

district court certified as final under Rule 54(b) in a case

involving statutory and constitutional challenges to

government surveillance programs – was intertwined with

several other issues that remained pending in district court

and this interlocutory appeal would only prolong final

resolution of the case.

COUNSEL

Richard R. Wiebe (argued), Law Office of Richard R. Wiebe,

San Francisco, California; Cindy A. Cohn, Lee Tien, Kurt

Opsahl, James S. Tyre, Mark Rumold, Andrew Crocker,

Jamie L. Williams, and David Greene, Electronic Frontier

Foundation, San Francisco, California; Rachael E. Meny,

Michael S. Kwun, Audrey Walton-Hadlock, Benjamin W.

Berkowitz, Justina K. Sessions, and Philip J. Tassin, Keker &

* This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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4 JEWEL V. NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY

Van Nest, LLP, San Francisco, California; Thomas E. Moore

III, Royse Law Firm, PC, Palo Alto, California; Aram

Antaramian, Law Office of Aram Antaramian, Berkeley,

California, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

Henry C. Whitaker (argued), Douglas N. Letter, and H.

Thomas Byron III, Appellate Staff, Civil Division, United

States Department of Justice, Washington, D.C, for

Defendants-Appellees. 

OPINION

McKEOWN Circuit Judge:

This appeal is the second trip to our court for a group of

plaintiffs in their long-running statutory and constitutional

challenges to government surveillance programs. In the last

appeal, we reversed the district court’s dismissal of all claims

on standing grounds and remanded for further proceedings,

including determination of whether the “claims are foreclosed

by the state secrets privilege.” Jewel v. Nat’l Sec. Agency,

673 F.3d 902, 905 (9th Cir. 2011). Several years of further

proceedings have yet to produce a final judgment. Most

recently, the district court dismissed a Fourth Amendment

claim—which was only one among several claims—

regarding Internet surveillance, on the grounds that plaintiffs

lacked standing and that their claim was barred by the state

secrets privilege. Jewel v. Nat’l Sec. Agency, No. C08-

04373, 2015 WL 545925, at *1 (N.D. Cal. Feb. 10, 2015). 

The court then certified that single issue as final under

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(b). 

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JEWEL V. NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY 5

The government filed a motion to dismiss the appeal for

lack of jurisdiction, arguing that certification was improper

under Rule 54(b). We agree. Our task is to address the

juridical concerns surrounding the appeal of less than a

complete judgment and to “scrutinize the district court’s

evaluation of such factors as the interrelationship of the

claims so as to prevent piecemeal appeals in cases which

should be reviewed only as single units.” Curtiss-Wright

Corp. v. Gen. Elec. Co., 446 U.S. 1, 10 (1980). Because the

Fourth Amendment question is intertwined with several other

issues that remain pending in district court and because this

interlocutory appeal would only prolong final resolution of

the case, we conclude that the Rule 54(b) certification was

not warranted and dismiss the appeal for lack of jurisdiction.

BACKGROUND

This appeal arises out of ongoing litigation concerning

Internet and cell phone surveillance programs the government

began in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September

11, 2001.1In 2008, Carolyn Jewel, Tash Hepting, Gregory

Hicks, Erik Knutzen, and Joice Walton filed a complaint on

behalf of themselves and others similarly situated against the

United States, the National Security Agency (“NSA”), and a

number of high-level government officials in their personal

and official capacities. The complaint included seventeen

counts, raising both constitutional and statutory claims and

seeking injunctive relief and monetary damages. In

summary, the complaint alleges that government officials

1 The Jewel case is one of many similar cases, some of which have been

consolidated under the Multidistrict Litigation provisions of 28 U.S.C.

§ 1407. See Jewel, 673 F.3d at 906 nn.1 & 2; see also Jewel v. Nat’l Sec.

Agency, No. C06-179, 2010 WL 235075, at *4 (N.D. Cal. Jan. 21, 2010).

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6 JEWEL V. NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY

engaged in continuing warrantless surveillance within the

United States that had begun under a secret presidential order. 

The “terrorist surveillance program,” some aspects of which

were publicly acknowledged by the government in 2005,

involved collecting data on millions of Internet and cell

phone users. According to plaintiffs, the telecommunications

company AT&T collaborated with the NSA to divert Internet

traffic into secure rooms at AT&T facilities in San Francisco

and to provide customer records to the government. Through

this collaboration, the government allegedly collected data on

cellular telephone communications, text messages, email, and

other forms of Internet communication without a warrant. 

Jewel, 673 F.3d at 906.

In 2010, the district court dismissed the action with

prejudice, holding that plaintiffs lacked a sufficiently

particularized injury and therefore lacked standing on all

claims. Jewel, 2010 WL 235075, at *1. On appeal, we

reversed and held that “Jewel’s claims are not abstract,

generalized grievances and instead meet the constitutional

standing requirement of concrete injury. Nor do prudential

considerations bar this action.” Jewel, 673 F.3d at 905. The

case was remanded to the district court “with instructions to

consider, among other claims and defenses, . . . the

government’s assertion that the state secrets privilege bars

this litigation.” Id. at 913–14. 

After remand, the district court addressed the interaction

between the state secrets privilege and sovereign immunity as

those issues pertain to the statutory claims under the Foreign

Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”), the Electronic

Communications Privacy Act (“Stored Communications

Act”), the Wiretap Act, and the Administrative Procedure

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JEWEL V. NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY 7

Act. Jewel v. Nat’l Sec. Agency, 965 F. Supp. 2d 1090 (N.D.

Cal. 2013). The district court determined:

• The government’s state secrets privilege does not

compel complete dismissal of the action because

sufficient information regarding the surveillance

program had been made public such that the subject

matter of the suit itself is not a state secret. Id. at

1102–03. 

• The “FISA procedural mechanism prescribed under

50 U.S.C. § 1806(f) preempts application of the state

secrets privilege.” Id. at 1103. Title 18 U.S.C.

§ 2712 applies to claims under the Stored

Communications Act and the Wiretap Act, thus

preempting the state secrets doctrine for those claims. 

Id. at 1105, 1107–08.

• The damages claims under FISA are barred by

sovereign immunity, but damages are not barred

under the Stored Communications Act or the Wiretap

Act. Id. at 1108.

• Plaintiffs cannot seek injunctive relief for their Stored

CommunicationsAct and Wiretap Act claims because

Patriot Act § 223, amending 18 U.S.C. §§ 2520(a) and

2707(a), impliedly limited authority to sue the United

States for forms of relief other than damages. Id. at

1109.

The district court’s order disposed of eleven of the

seventeen claims and explicitly declined to address any of

the constitutional claims, which included First and Fourth

Amendment challenges to Internet and phone surveillance

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8 JEWEL V. NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY

programs and an alleged violation of the separation of powers

principle. Id. at 1097, 1112. Nor did the court address the

possible defenses, such as qualified immunity, that might be

available to individual defendants. The district court

requested further briefing on the scope of FISA preemption

with regard to the constitutional claims, noting that plaintiffs

had the burden to show standing to sue without risking

impermissible damage to ongoing national security efforts. 

Id. at 1112. The court also requested briefing on the “recent

disclosure of the government’s continuing surveillance

activities and the statement by the Director of National

Intelligence that certain information . . . should be

declassified and immediately released to the public.” Id. at

1113.

While the parties were in the process of briefing these

questions, three of the five plaintiffs, Jewel, Knutzen, and

Walton (collectively “Jewel” or the “Jewel plaintiffs”),

moved for partial summary judgment on one aspect of their

Fourth Amendment claim related specifically to Internet

interception because theythought the public record supported

their claim. Jewel specifically limited the scope of the

motion to only one aspect of the Fourth Amendment claim

“[a]t this time.”2Jewel alleges that the government is

engaging in a dragnet Internet interception program called

2

 The motion narrowed the request for relief as follows: “At this time,

plaintiffs do not seek a determination of the government defendants’

liability for: a) past Fourth Amendment violations, including during

periods that those activities were conducted solely under presidential

authority without any Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order; b)

past or present Fourth Amendment violations arising from government

activities other than Internet communications, seizure or searching; or c)

past or present violations of statutory and constitutional provisions other

than the Fourth Amendment.”

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JEWEL V. NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY 9

“Upstream” collection, and that this program is an element of

the government’s collection of communications under FISA

§ 702. Under this program, the NSA designates “non-U.S.

persons located outside the United States who are reasonably

believed to possess or receive, or are likely to communicate,

foreign intelligence information.” Jewel, 2015 WL 545925,

at *1. Once specific telephone numbers or email addresses

associated with these individuals are identified, the NSA,

assisted by the telecommunications providers, filters Internet

communications “in an effort to remove all purely domestic

communications” in order to capture designated

communications. Id. at *2. The Jewel plaintiffs contend that

this program constitutes surveillance of private

communications without a warrant or individualized

suspicion, in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Id. The

government has “acknowledged the existence of the

Upstream collection process . . . . [, h]owever, the technical

details of the collections process remain classified.” Id.

In an order denying Jewel’s motion for summary

judgment and granting the government’s cross-motion, the

district court held that plaintiffs failed to establish a sufficient

factual basis for standing to challenge the ongoing Internet

data collection program. Although the court agreed that

Jewel could demonstrate concrete injury if the Internet

interception program operated in the way proffered, “the

evidence at summary judgment is insufficient to establish that

the Upstream collection process operates in the manner in

which Plaintiffs allege it does” and that, based on classified

materials relating to Upstream collection, “the Plaintiffs’

version of the significant operational details of the Upstream

collection process is substantially inaccurate.” Id. at *4. The

court further held that the Fourth Amendment claims “must

be dismissed because even if Plaintiffs could establish

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10 JEWEL V. NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY

standing . . . any possible defenses would require

impermissible disclosure of state secret information.” Id. at

*1.

Granting Jewel’s motion under Rule 54(b), the district

court certified that “adjudication of this claim is a final

determination and that no just reason exists for delay in

entering final judgment on this claim.” Other than a bare

recitation of the rule, the court offered no explanation or

analysis regarding the certification. After Jewel filed this

appeal, the government responded with a motion to dismiss

the appeal for lack of jurisdiction.

ANALYSIS

We begin with the foundational rule that generally we

have jurisdiction to hear an appeal only if it arises from a

final order, and “[a]n order granting partial summary

judgment is usually not an appealable final order under

28 U.S.C. § 1291 because it does not dispose of all of the

claims.” Am. States Ins. Co. v. Dastar Corp., 318 F.3d 881,

884 (9th Cir. 2003) (citing 28 U.S.C. § 1291). An important

exception is found in Rule 54(b), which provides in relevant

part: 

When an action presents more than one claim

for relief . . . or when multiple parties are

involved, the court may direct entry of a final

judgment as to one or more, but fewer than

all, claims or parties only if the court

expressly determines that there is no just

reason for delay.

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JEWEL V. NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY 11

The Rule was adopted “specifically to avoid the possible

injustice of delay[ing] judgment o[n] a distinctly separate

claim [pending] adjudication of the entire case. . . . The Rule

thus aimed to augment, not diminish, appeal opportunity.”

Gelboim v. Bank of Am. Corp., 135 S. Ct. 897, 902–03 (2015)

(citations omitted). The Supreme Court has put some meat

on this bare-bones rule. In highlighting the importance of

juridical concerns with piecemeal appeals, the Court

explained the role of a court of appeals in reviewing a Rule

54(b) certification:

The court of appeals must, of course,

scrutinize the district court’s evaluation of

such factors as the interrelationship of the

claims so as to prevent piecemeal appeals in

cases which should be reviewed only as single

units. But once such juridical concerns have

been met, the discretionary judgment of the

district court should be given substantial

deference, for that court is “the one most

likely to be familiar with the case and with

any justifiable reasons for delay.” 

Curtiss-Wright Corp., 446 U.S. at 10 (citations omitted). 

We review de novo the “juridical concerns”

determination, first asking whether the certified order is

sufficiently divisible from the other claims such that the “case

would [not] inevitably come back to this court on the same

set of facts.” Wood v. GCC Bend, LLC, 422 F.3d 873, 879

(9th Cir. 2005). This inquiry does not require the issues

raised on appeal to be completely distinct from the rest of the

action, “so long as resolving the claims would ‘streamline the

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12 JEWEL V. NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY

ensuing litigation.’” Noel v. Hall, 568 F.3d 743, 747 (9th Cir.

2009) (citation omitted). 

The determination regarding Rule 54(b)’s equitable

analysis ordinarily “is left to the sound judicial discretion of

the district court to determine the ‘appropriate time’ when

each final decision in a multiple claims action is ready for

appeal.” Wood, 422 F.3d at 878 (quoting Curtiss-Wright

Corp., 446 U.S. at 8). Although we encourage district courts

to make factual findings and to explain their reasons for

certifying under Rule 54(b) in order to facilitate appellate

review, see Morrison-Knudsen Co. v. Archer, 655 F.2d 962,

965 (9th Cir. 1981), we have held that the “lack of such

findings is not a jurisdictional defect as long as we can

independently determine the propriety of the order.” Noel,

568 F.3d at 747 n.5. Thus, if a district court does not make

any findings or give any explanation, we turn to the record to

discern whether Rule 54(b) certification was warranted. 

Here, similar to Noel, the district court did not explain why it

found that no just reason existed to delay entering judgment. 

Unlike Noel, however, based on the record before us we

conclude that Rule 54(b) certification was not appropriate.

As in Wood, “[w]e start (and mostly stop) with juridical

concerns.” 422 F.3d at 879. We face the same hurdle

encountered in Wood: “[w]e have no district court finding

. . . about the interrelationship of the claims or issues, and the

effect of the relationship on the likelihood of piecemeal

appeals.” Id. at 880. 

The certification order carves out a single claim: “that the

copying and searching of their Internet communications is

conducted without a warrant or any individualized suspicion

and, accordingly, violates the Fourth Amendment.” This

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JEWEL V. NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY 13

claim is but one of seventeen asserted in the complaint. Even

excluding the claims seeking damages under FISA and

injunctive relief under other statutes, which were dismissed

in 2013,3still undecided are a number of constitutional and

statutory claims relating to both Internet interception and cell

phone surveillance. See Jewel, 965 F. Supp. 2d at 1112–13

(listing the dismissed issues). In the absence of a roadmap in

the certification order, we are left to unscramble how these

complex claims (and the government’s defenses) intersect

and overlap. 

The district court observed that “Plaintiffs seek

adjudication as to their Fourth Amendment Claim with regard

only to the NSA’s acknowledged Upstream collection of

communications.” Jewel, 2015 WL 545925, at *2 (emphasis

added). Jewel’s counsel characterized the claim on appeal as

“the entirety of the Fourth Amendment Internet interception

claim against the government.” This effort to carve out a

specific, severable claim obscures the fact that the Internet

interception theory is not the only Fourth Amendment

argument, nor is the Fourth Amendment the only ground for

relief alleged to arise from the Internet interception program,

nor does the appeal encompass all plaintiffs or all defendants. 

It quickly becomes apparent that the Rule 54(b) order does

not present final adjudication of a complete claim on the

facts, the theories for relief, or the parties. See Houston

Indus. Inc. v. United States, 78 F.3d 564, 567 (Fed. Cir. 1996)

(“The resolution of individual issues within a claim does not

satisfy the requirements of Rule 54(b).”).

3 Those dismissal orders were not certified under Rule 54(b) and are not

part of this appeal. 

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14 JEWEL V. NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY

Jewel’s assertion that the Fourth Amendment Internet

interception claim is factually distinct from the rest of the

litigation is unconvincing. Jewel divides the claims into four

categories, which they suggest are distinct: Internet content,

Internet records (metadata), telephone content, and telephone

records (metadata). All four categories rely on interconnected factual allegations that the government

collaborated with telecommunications providers to obtain

information about domestic communications in a manner that

is either unconstitutional or beyond the government’s

statutory authority. Indeed, the complaint presents one

section entitled “Factual Allegations Related to All Counts.”

We conclude that “this case would inevitably come back to

this court on the same set of facts.” See Wood, 422 F.3d at

879. 

Apart from the common and intersecting facts, the nature

of the claims makes piecemeal certification inappropriate. 

Jewel attempts to bifurcate the Fourth Amendment claims,

focusing this appeal on Internet interception, while leaving

the Fourth Amendment phone records claims in district court. 

Notably, however, all five plaintiffs have Fourth Amendment

claims related to their phone records allegations. They also

have damages claims against individual defendants for Fourth

Amendment violations that have not yet been addressed by

the district court.

The carve-out approach suffers from another infirmity—

not even all of the Internet interception claims are raised in

this appeal. For example, the First Amendment claims

remain unresolved in the district court, as do many of the

statutory Internet interception claims. See Jewel, 965 F.

Supp. 2d at 1112. Significantly, the Internet interception

claims rely on overlapping elements of the same allegedly

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JEWEL V. NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY 15

illegal government actions. Whether pleading constitutional

or statutory violations, the “legal right to relief stems largely

from the same set of facts and would give rise to successive

appeals that would turn largely on identical, and interrelated,

facts.” Wood, 422 F.3d at 880. The district court’s

conclusion that the plaintiffs “failed to establish a sufficient

factual basis to find they have standing to sue under the

Fourth Amendment regarding the possible interception of

their Internet communications” cannot be limited to the

narrow Fourth Amendment claim. Jewel, 2015 WL 545925,

at *1. The court rejected Jewel’s standing argument because

plaintiffs failed to describe the Internet interception program 

accurately. Id. at *4. It is only logical that this reasoning

raised a potential standing bar for all claims related to the

same government program. The district court further held

that, even if plaintiffs could establish standing to challenge

the Internet interception program, “any possible defenses

would require impermissible disclosure of state secret

information.” Id. at *1 (emphasis added).4 The alternative

state secrets holding presents the same conundrum as the

court’s standing ruling: it is not practical to cabin the ruling

to the Fourth Amendment claim, thus presenting a realistic

risk of duplicative litigation on remaining claims. 

A final complication is that not all of the parties are

included in this appeal, nor does this appeal resolve all of the

Jewel plaintiffs’ claims. See Spiegel v. Trustees of Tufts

Coll., 843 F.2d 38, 44 (1st Cir. 1988) (“It will be a rare case

where Rule 54(b) can appropriately be applied when the

4 The district court did not address the relationship between this holding

and its previous determination that FISA § 1806(f) preempts the state

secrets doctrine for Stored Communications Act and Wiretap Act claims. 

See Jewel, 965 F. Supp. 2d. at 1108.

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16 JEWEL V. NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY

contestants on appeal remain, simultaneously, contestants

below.”). Only three of the five plaintiffs pursued the Fourth

Amendment motion for summary judgment. Jewel explains

that this is because two of the plaintiffs were not AT&T

Internet customers and, therefore, did not claim that the

government had collected information regarding their Internet

use. Nevertheless, this circumstance fractures the appeal

even further, especially because the facts and legal theories

relied upon by the Jewel plaintiffs to show standing for the

Fourth Amendment argument are not substantially different

from some of the other constitutional and statutory claims,

which apply to all plaintiffs. 

In sum, the “practical effect of certifying the [Fourth

Amendment] issue[] in this case is to deconstruct [the] action

so as to allow piecemeal appeals with respect to the same set

of facts.” Wood, 422 F.3d at 880.

Apart from juridical concerns, which counsel against

certification, we are not convinced that this appeal meets the

“no just reason for delay” prong of Rule 54(b). Our

consideration of the single issue served up for interlocutory

review is more likely to cause additional delay than it is to

ameliorate delay problems. See Sussex Drug Prods. v.

Kanasco, Ltd., 920 F.2d 1150, 1156 (3d Cir. 1990) (“The

interlocking factual relationship of the various counts leading

to the likelihood that a subsequent appeal would again seek

review of the issues presented here also suggests that it was

not in the interests of sound judicial administration for the

district court to certify this judgment as final.”). 

We are sympathetic to the Jewel plaintiffs’ desire to bring

at least part of this case to a close. But awaiting a decision on

a single claim, which is not a linchpin claim either factually

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JEWEL V. NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY 17

or legally, does not advance this result. In fact, the result of

this appeal has been to bring the district court proceedings to

a halt. Both sides point fingers as to why no final decision

has been reached. We do not take sides in that debate, except

to say that the parties’ and judicial resources would be better

spent obtaining a final judgment on all of the claims, instead

of detouring to the court of appeals for a piecemeal resolution

of but one sliver of the case. 

CONCLUSION

Because the appeal does not meet the requirements of

Rule 54(b), we lack jurisdiction over the appeal. The

government’s motion to dismiss is granted, and the case is

remanded to the district court for further proceedings. 

CERTIFICATIONREVERSED;APPEALDISMISSED; CASE

REMANDED.

Each party shall bear its own costs on appeal. 

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