Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-601_bq7c.pdf
Page Number: 23

6  CAMERON v. EMW WOMEN’S SURGICAL CENTER, P. S. C. 

THOMAS, J., concurring 

Eisenstein,  we  have  not  once  relied  on  Devlin  outside  the 
class-action context.  See United States v. Sanchez-Gomez, 
584 U. S. ___, ___ (2018) (slip op., at 6); Standard Fire Ins. 
Co. v. Knowles, 568 U. S. 588, 593 (2013); Smith v. Bayer 
Corp., 564 U. S 299, 313–315 (2011).  Devlin is therefore an 
aberration from our otherwise consistent view that only a 
named party may file a notice of appeal under Rules 3 and 
4.    And  because  this  case  does  not  involve  a  class  action, 
Devlin has no precedential force.  

* 

  * 

  * 
  The Office of the Kentucky Attorney General was not a 
named “party” to the District Court’s final judgment.  The 
attorney  general,  accordingly,  could  not  notice  an  appeal 
from that judgment under Rules 3 and 4.  And because the 
attorney general could not appeal the District Court’s judg-
ment, Attorney General Cameron moved to intervene and 
pursue  “the  requisite  method  for  a  nonparty  to  become  a 
party to a lawsuit.”  Eisenstein, 556 U. S., at 933.  Far from 
evading  the  jurisdictional  requirements  of  Rules  3  and  4, 
Cameron’s motion to intervene was his only legitimate op-
tion to both comply with those Rules and participate in the 
appeal as a party.  For this reason, as well as those given in 
the opinion of the Court, respondents’ jurisdictional argu-
ment fails.