Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-210_7mi8.pdf
Page Number: 9

Cite as:  598 U. S. ____ (2023) 

7 

Opinion of the Court 

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 final judgment,” and so is typically not immediately
appealable.  Ortiz,  562  U. S.,  at  184.    But  §1291  does  not
insulate  interlocutory  orders  from  appellate  scrutiny;  it 
simply  delays  review  until  final  judgment.  Richardson-
Merrell Inc. v. Koller, 472 U. S. 424, 430 (1985) (noting that
some  errors  in  interlocutory  orders  “go  uncorrected  until 
the appeal of a final 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
two-track  system  of  summary  judgment,  in  which  factual
and  legal  claims  follow  different  routes.  Summary  judg-
ment is summary judgment, Younger insists, so the claims 
should all travel the same line.  But nothing in Rule 56 de-
mands 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 posi-
tion.  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 definition, one whose answer is independent of disputed
facts, factual development at trial will not change the dis-
trict  court’s  answer. 
(Granted,  the  district  court  might
backtrack, but if the question is purely legal, that is because