Page:Dupree v. Younger.pdf/9

Rh 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 judgment is summary judgment, Younger insists, so the claims should all 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 definition, 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