Page Proof Pending Publication

PRELIMINARY PRINT 

Volume 598 U. S. Part 2 

Pages 729–738 

OFFICIAL REPORTS 

OF 

THE SUPREME COURT 

May 25, 2023 

REBECCA A. WOMELDORF 

reporter of decisions 

NOTICE: This preliminary print is subject to formal revision before 

the bound volume is published. Users are requested to notify the Reporter 

of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D.C. 20543, 

pio@supremecourt.gov, of any typographical or other formal errors. 
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OCTOBER TERM, 2022 729 

Syllabus 

DUPREE v. YOUNGER 

certiorari to the united states court of appeals for 

the fourth circuit 

No. 22–210. Argued April 24, 2023—Decided May 25, 2023 

Respondent Kevin Younger claims that during his pretrial detention in a 

Maryland state prison, petitioner Neil Dupree, then a correctional offcer lieutenant, ordered three prison guards to attack him. Younger 

sued Dupree for damages under 42 U. S. C. § 1983, alleging excessive 

use of force. Prior to trial, Dupree moved for summary judgment 

under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(a), arguing that Younger had 

failed to exhaust administrative remedies as required by law. Rule 56 

requires a district court to enter judgment on a claim or defense if there 

is “no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled 

to judgment as a matter of law.” The District Court denied the motion, 

fnding no dispute that the Maryland prison system had internally investigated Younger's assault, and concluding that this inquiry satisfed 

Younger's exhaustion obligation. At trial, Dupree did not present evidence relating to his exhaustion defense. The jury found Dupree and 

four codefendants liable and awarded Younger $700,000 in damages. 

Dupree did not fle a post-trial motion under Rule 50(b), which allows a 

disappointed party to fle a renewed motion for judgment as a matter 

of law. He appealed a single issue to the Fourth Circuit: the District 

Court's rejection of his exhaustion defense. The Fourth Circuit— 

bound by its precedent which holds that any claim or defense rejected 

at summary judgment is not preserved for appellate review unless it 

was renewed in a post-trial motion—dismissed the appeal. 

Held: A post-trial motion under Rule 50 is not required to preserve for 

appellate review a purely legal issue resolved at summary judgment. 

In Ortiz v. Jordan, the Court held that an order denying summary judgment on suffciency-of-the-evidence grounds is not appealable after trial. 

562 U. S. 180, 184. Because the factual record developed at trial “supersedes the record existing at the time of the summary-judgment motion,” 

ibid., it follows that a party must raise a suffciency claim in a post-trial 

motion in order to preserve it for appeal, id., at 191–192. That motion 

allows the district court to take frst crack at the question that the 

appellate court will ultimately face: Was there suffcient evidence in the 

trial record to support the jury's verdict? 

The same is not true for pure questions of law resolved in an order 

denying summary judgment. These conclusions are not “supersede[d]” 
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Syllabus 

by later developments in the litigation, id., at 184, and so such rulings 

merge into the fnal judgment, at which point they are reviewable on 

appeal, Quackenbush v. Allstate Ins. Co., 517 U. S. 706, 712. The reviewing court does not beneft from having a district court reexamine a 

purely legal pretrial ruling after trial, because nothing at trial will have 

given the district court any reason to question its prior analysis. 

Younger's counterarguments are unpersuasive. Ortiz does not hold, 

as Younger contends, that any order denying summary judgment— 

whether decided on legal or factual grounds—is unreviewable under 28 

U. S. C. § 1291. While an interlocutory order denying summary judgment is typically not immediately appealable, § 1291 does not insulate 

interlocutory orders from appellate scrutiny, but rather delays their review until fnal judgment. And while Younger insists there should be 

no two-track system of summary judgment, in which factual and legal 

claims follow different routes, nothing in Rule 56 supports his argument 

for uniformity. On the contrary, ftting the preservation rule to the 

rationale (factual or legal) underlying the summary-judgment order is 

consistent with the text of Rule 56. It also makes sense: Factual development at trial will not change the district court's pretrial answer to a 

purely legal question, so a post-trial motion requirement would amount 

to an empty exercise. Finally, while Younger predicts that a separate 

preservation rule for legal issues will prove unworkable because the 

line between factual and legal questions can be “vexing” for courts and 

litigants, Pullman-Standard v. Swint, 456 U. S. 273, 288, experience 

demonstrates that Younger overstates the need for a bright-line rule. 

“Courts of appeals have long found it possible to separate factual from 

legal matters.” Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc. v. Sandoz, Inc., 574 

U. S. 318, 328. Here, the Court does not decide whether the issue 

Dupree raised on appeal is purely legal, and remands for the Fourth 

Circuit to evaluate that question in the frst instance. Pp. 733–738. 

Vacated and remanded. 

Barrett, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. 

Andrew T. Tutt argued the cause for petitioner. With him 

on the briefs were R. Stanton Jones, Sean A. Mirski, Dana 

Or, and Aaron Bowling. 

Amy Mason Saharia argued the cause for respondent. 

With her on the brief were Lisa S. Blatt, A. Joshua Podoll, 

and Allen E. Honick.* 

*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were fled for the DRI Center 

for Law and Public Policy by Matthew T. Nelson and Charles R. Quigg; 

and for Law Professors by Steffen N. Johnson and Conor Tucker. 
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Cite as: 598 U. S. 729 (2023) 731 

Opinion of the Court 

Justice Barrett delivered the opinion of the Court. 

In Ortiz v. Jordan, we held that an order denying summary judgment on suffciency-of-the-evidence grounds is not 

reviewable on appeal after a trial. 562 U. S. 180 (2011). 

Thus, a party who wants to preserve a suffciency challenge 

for review on appeal must raise it anew in a post-trial motion. The question presented in this case is whether this 

preservation requirement extends to a purely legal issue resolved at summary judgment. The answer is no. 

I 

A 

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure empower district 

courts to direct the entry of judgment before, during, or 

after trial. Before trial, the defendant can fle a motion to 

dismiss the complaint based on certain defenses, such as lack 

of jurisdiction or failure to state a claim upon which relief 

can be granted. Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 12(b). If the district 

court denies that motion (or any other Rule 12 motion), the 

case advances to discovery for the parties to marshal evidence supporting their claims and defenses. During or after 

that process, either party can move for summary judgment 

under Rule 56, which requires a district court to enter judgment on a claim or defense if there is “no genuine dispute as 

to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment 

as a matter of law.” Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 56(a). 

If the plaintiff's claims survive summary judgment, the 

case proceeds to trial. After the presentation of evidence, 

but before the case is submitted to the jury, Rule 50(a) 

authorizes either party to move for judgment as a matter 

of law.1 This standard largely “mirrors” the summaryjudgment standard, the difference being that district courts 

evaluate Rule 50(a) motions in light of the trial record rather 

1 If the parties waive their rights to a jury or seek relief that does not 

entitle them to a jury, the district court will hold a bench trial, which is 

governed by Rule 52. 
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Opinion of the Court 

than the discovery record. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 

477 U. S. 242, 250–251 (1986). 

If the district court does not grant the motion, then the 

jury will render a verdict. After the verdict, Rule 50(b) 

permits a disappointed party to fle a renewed motion for 

judgment as a matter of law (which may also include a request for a new trial under Rule 59). The next step for a 

party who fails to obtain post-trial relief is an appeal. 

B 

While Kevin Younger was being held as a pretrial detainee 

in a Maryland state prison, three corrections offcers assaulted him. Younger believed that Neil Dupree, a former 

lieutenant in the prison, had ordered the attack. He sued 

Dupree and other prison offcials for damages under 42 

U. S. C. § 1983, alleging that they had used excessive force in 

violation of his Fourteenth Amendment due process rights. 

Dupree moved for summary judgment, arguing that 

Younger had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies 

as required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act, 42 U. S. C. 

§ 1997e(a). The District Court denied the motion. It noted 

factual disagreements between the parties about whether 

Younger had adhered to Maryland's Administrative Remedy 

Procedure but concluded that it “need not resolve [those] disputes.” Younger v. Green, Civ. No. 16–3269 (D Md., Dec. 19, 

2019), App. to Pet. for Cert. 42a. Instead, the court observed that there was “no dispute” that the Maryland prison 

system had internally investigated Younger's assault. Ibid. 

And it held that this inquiry satisfed Younger's exhaustion 

obligation. 

The case then proceeded to a jury trial. Dupree did not 

present any evidence relating to his exhaustion defense, nor 

did he invoke exhaustion in his Rule 50(a) motion, which the 

District Court denied. The jury found Dupree and four of 

his codefendants liable and awarded Younger $700,000 in damages. Dupree did not fle a post-trial motion under Rule 50(b). 
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Cite as: 598 U. S. 729 (2023) 733 

Opinion of the Court 

Dupree appealed to the Fourth Circuit. He sought review 

of a single issue: the District Court's rejection of his exhaustion defense at summary judgment. Unfortunately for 

Dupree, the appeal was over before it began. Fourth Circuit precedent maintains that a claim or defense rejected at 

summary judgment is not preserved for appellate review unless it was renewed in a post-trial motion—even when the 

issue is a purely legal one. Varghese v. Honeywell Int'l, 

Inc., 424 F. 3d 411, 422–423 (2005). Bound by this precedent, the panel dismissed the appeal. 

The Fourth Circuit's decision further cemented a confict 

among the Courts of Appeals over whether a purely legal 

challenge resolved at summary judgment must be renewed 

in a post-trial motion in order to preserve that challenge 

for appellate review. We granted certiorari to resolve the 

disagreement.2 598 U. S. ––– (2023). 

II 

A 

The jurisdiction of the Courts of Appeals under 28 U. S. C. 

§ 1291 is limited to “appeals from . . . fnal decisions of the 

2 Compare Rothstein v. Carriere, 373 F. 3d 275, 284 (CA2 2004) (posttrial motion not required to preserve claims of purely legal error); Frank 

C. Pollara Group, LLC v. Ocean View Inv. Holding, LLC, 784 F. 3d 177, 

187 (CA3 2015) (same); In re AmTrust Financial Corp., 694 F. 3d 741, 

750–751 (CA6 2012) (same); Chemetall GMBH v. ZR Energy, Inc., 320 

F. 3d 714, 719–720 (CA7 2003) (same); Banuelos v. Construction Laborers' 

Trust Funds for Southern Cal., 382 F. 3d 897, 902–903 (CA9 2004) (same); 

Wolfgang v. Mid-America Motorsports, Inc., 111 F. 3d 1515, 1521 (CA10 

1997) (same); Feld v. Feld, 688 F. 3d 779, 783 (CADC 2012) (same), with Ji 

v. Bose Corp., 626 F. 3d 116, 127–128 (CA1 2010) (post-trial motion required 

to preserve claims of pure legal error); Varghese v. Honeywell Int'l, Inc., 

424 F. 3d 411, 422–423 (CA4 2005) (same); Feld Motor Sports, Inc. v. Traxxas, L. P., 861 F. 3d 591, 596 (CA5 2017) (same); American Builders Ins. 

Co. v. Southern-Owners Ins. Co., 56 F. 4th 938, 950 (CA11 2023) (same); 

see also New York Marine & Gen. Ins. Co. v. Continental Cement Co., 761 

F. 3d 830, 838–839 (CA8 2014) (post-trial motion not required to preserve 

“preliminary” legal issues). 
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Opinion of the Court 

district courts.” Interlocutory orders—those that do not 

dispose of the whole case, like denials of summary judgment—are typically not immediately appealable under 

§ 1291.3 Instead, the “general rule is that `a party is entitled 

to a single appeal, to be deferred until fnal judgment has 

been entered, in which claims of district court error at any 

stage of the litigation may be ventilated.' ” Quackenbush v. 

Allstate Ins. Co., 517 U. S. 706, 712 (1996); see also 15A 

C. Wright, A. Miller, & E. Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure § 3905.1 (3d ed. 2022) (generally, “an appeal from fnal 

judgment opens the record and permits review of all rulings 

that led up to the judgment”). 

Some interlocutory district-court rulings, however, are unreviewable after fnal judgment because they are overcome 

by later developments in the litigation. As Ortiz explains, 

one such ruling is the denial of summary judgment on 

suffciency-of-the-evidence grounds. 562 U. S., at 184. Factual challenges depend on, well, the facts, which the parties 

develop and clarify as the case progresses from summary 

judgment to a jury verdict. Thus, “[o]nce the case proceeds 

to trial, the full record developed in court supersedes the 

record existing at the time of the summary-judgment motion.” Ibid. So after trial, a district court's assessment of 

the facts based on the summary-judgment record becomes 

“ancient history and [is] not subject to appeal.” Empress 

Casino Joliet Corp. v. Balmoral Racing Club, Inc., 831 F. 3d 

815, 823–824 (CA7 2016). Fact-dependent rulings must be 

appraised in light of the complete trial record. 

It follows, Ortiz holds, that a party must raise a 

suffciency-of-the-evidence claim in a post-trial motion to 

preserve it for review on appeal. 562 U. S., at 191–192. 

Appellate review, by its nature, requires a lower court decision to review. Freytag v. Commissioner, 501 U. S. 868, 895 

3 The collateral-order doctrine recognizes exceptions to this rule. For 

instance, an interlocutory order denying qualifed immunity is sometimes 

immediately appealable. Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U. S. 511, 530 (1985). 
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Opinion of the Court 

(1991) (Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (the “very word `review' presupposes that a litigant's 

arguments have been raised and considered in the tribunal 

of frst instance”). This is especially important for factual 

challenges based on the trial record, which “cal[l] for the 

judgment in the frst instance of the judge who saw and 

heard the witnesses and has the feel of the case which no 

appellate printed transcript can impart.” Cone v. West Virginia Pulp & Paper Co., 330 U. S. 212, 216 (1947). The fling 

of a post-trial motion under Rule 50 allows the district court 

to take frst crack at the question that the appellate court 

will ultimately face: Was there suffcient evidence in the trial 

record to support the jury's verdict? Absent such a motion, 

“an appellate court is `powerless' to review the suffciency of 

the evidence after trial.” Ortiz, 562 U. S., at 189 (quoting 

Unitherm Food Systems, Inc. v. Swift-Eckrich, Inc., 546 

U. S. 394, 405 (2006)). 

B 

Younger urges us to extend Ortiz's holding to cover pure 

questions of law resolved in an order denying summary judgment. We decline the invitation. 

While factual issues addressed in summary-judgment denials are unreviewable on appeal, the same is not true of 

purely legal issues—that is, issues that can be resolved without reference to any disputed facts. Trials wholly supplant 

pretrial factual rulings, but they leave pretrial legal rulings 

undisturbed. The point of a trial, after all, is not to hash 

out the law. Because a district court's purely legal conclusions at summary judgment are not “supersede[d]” by later 

developments in the litigation, Ortiz, 562 U. S., at 184, these 

rulings follow the “general rule” and merge into the fnal 

judgment, at which point they are reviewable on appeal, 

Quackenbush, 517 U. S., at 712. 

That difference explains why a summary-judgment motion 

is suffcient to preserve legal but not factual claims. As 

Ortiz explains, an appellate court's review of factual chal-
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Opinion of the Court 

lenges after a trial is rooted in the complete trial record, 

which means that a district court's factual rulings based on 

the obsolete summary-judgment record are useless. A district court's resolution of a pure question of law, by contrast, 

is unaffected by future developments in the case. From the 

reviewing court's perspective, there is no beneft to having a 

district court reexamine a purely legal issue after trial, because nothing at trial will have given the district court any 

reason to question its prior analysis. We therefore hold that 

a post-trial motion under Rule 50 is not required to preserve 

for appellate review a purely legal issue resolved at summary judgment. 

C 

Younger's counterarguments do not persuade us otherwise. First, he argues that under Ortiz, an order denying 

summary judgment is not a “fnal decision” under § 1291 and 

cannot be appealed, regardless of whether the motion was 

decided on legal or factual grounds. We agree that a denial 

of summary judgment is “simply a step along the route to 

fnal judgment,” and so is typically not immediately reviewable on appeal. Ortiz, 562 U. S., at 184. But § 1291 does 

not insulate interlocutory orders from appellate scrutiny; it 

simply delays review until fnal judgment. RichardsonMerrell Inc. v. Koller, 472 U. S. 424, 430 (1985) (noting that 

some errors in interlocutory orders “go uncorrected until the 

appeal of a fnal judgment”). Indeed, the Ortiz Court expressly declined to address whether summary-judgment denials on purely legal issues are reviewable. 562 U. S., at 190. 

That caveat would have made little sense had the Court authoritatively decided that all summary-judgment denials are 

meaningless passthroughs that appellate courts should 

ignore. 

Next, Younger complains that Dupree's rule creates a twotrack system of summary judgment, in which factual and 

legal claims follow different routes. Summary judgment is 

summary judgment, Younger insists, so the claims should all 
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Cite as: 598 U. S. 729 (2023) 737 

Opinion of the Court 

travel the same line. But nothing in Rule 56 demands such 

uniformity. On the contrary, the Rule provides that summary judgment is appropriate when “the movant shows that 

there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the 

movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Fed. 

Rule Civ. Proc. 56(a) (emphasis added). Rule 56 thus contemplates that the court will sometimes deny the motion because the facts are genuinely in dispute and other times 

because the law does not support the movant's position. 

Fitting the preservation rule to the court's rationale (factual 

or legal) is therefore consistent with the text. 

It also makes sense. Because a purely legal question is, 

by defnition, one whose answer is independent of disputed 

facts, factual development at trial will not change the district 

court's answer. (Granted, the district court might backtrack, but if the question is purely legal, that is because of 

law books, not trial exhibits.) So what would a repeatmotion requirement for legal questions typically amount to? 

For litigants, a copy and paste of summary-judgment motions into post-trial format. For district courts, the tedium 

of saying no twice. There is no reason to force litigants and 

district courts to undertake that empty exercise. 

Rule 56 aside, Younger insists that Rule 50 supports him. 

Under this Rule, a district court can grant judgment as a 

matter of law if it fnds that “a reasonable jury would not 

have a legally suffcient evidentiary basis to fnd for the 

party on that issue.” Fed. Rules Civ. Proc. 50(a), (b) (emphasis added). Therefore, Younger says, a Rule 50 motion 

is an appropriate vehicle for raising purely legal issues once 

a case proceeds to trial. Maybe so, but this argument is 

beside the point: Even if a party can raise legal issues in a 

Rule 50 motion, nothing in the Rule requires her to do so. 

Finally, Younger predicts that a separate preservation 

rule for legal issues will prove unworkable because the line 

between factual and legal questions can be “vexing” for 

courts and litigants. Pullman-Standard v. Swint, 456 U. S. 
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Opinion of the Court 

273, 288 (1982). That's a fair concern, and it would not be 

surprising if “prudent counsel . . . make sure to renew their 

arguments in a Rule 50 motion” out of an abundance of caution. Feld v. Feld, 688 F. 3d 779, 783 (CADC 2012). But 

Younger overstates the need for a bright-line rule in this 

area. “Courts of appeals have long found it possible to separate factual from legal matters.” Teva Pharmaceuticals 

USA, Inc. v. Sandoz, Inc., 574 U. S. 318, 328 (2015). Though 

there will be edge cases, the experience of the majority of 

circuits demonstrates that the Courts of Appeals are up to 

the task. See n. 2, supra. And for all the virtues of brightline rules, Younger's would come at a steep cost: the loss of 

appellate review for unwary litigants who think it futile to 

relitigate an already-rejected legal argument. 

III 

The Fourth Circuit was wrong to hold that purely legal 

issues resolved at summary judgment must be renewed in 

a post-trial motion. We need not decide whether the issue 

Dupree raised on appeal is purely legal—the Court of Appeals may evaluate that and any other properly preserved 

arguments in the frst instance. We therefore vacate the 

judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the case for 

further proceedings consistent with this opinion. 

It is so ordered. 
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Reporter’s Note 

The attached opinion has been revised to refect the usual publication 

and citation style of the United States Reports. The revised pagination 

makes available the offcial United States Reports citation in advance of 

publication. The syllabus has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions 

for the convenience of the reader and constitutes no part of the opinion of 

the Court. A list of counsel who argued or fled briefs in this case, and 

who were members of the bar of this Court at the time this case was 

argued, has been inserted following the syllabus. Other revisions may 

include adjustments to formatting, captions, citation form, and any errant 

punctuation. The following additional edits were made: 

p. 731, line 3, “appealable” is changed to “reviewable on appeal”

p. 731, line 4, “review on” is inserted after “for”

p. 733, line 1, the frst sentence of the paragraph is deleted and replaced

with: “Dupree appealed to the Fourth Circuit. He sought review of a

single issue: the District Court's rejection of his exhaustion defense at

summary judgment.”

p. 734, in the last sentence of the full paragraph, “appeals” is changed

to “rulings”

p. 734, line 31, “review on” is inserted before “appeal.”

p. 736, lines 19–20, “appealable” is changed to “reviewable on appeal”