Supreme Court holds deadline for appealing a federal lawsuit is not jurisdictional

Prior case law had suggested and many litigators had assumed that the deadline for filing an appeal in a federal lawsuit is jurisdictional, meaning it cannot be waived or extended and must be met at the risk of losing an otherwise meritorious appeal. In a recent case, the appellant requested and received, before her deadline to appeal, a 2-month extension of the deadline to appeal. That extension was one month more than the federal rules allow. Those federal rules are adopted by the courts, specifically the Supreme Court, they are not laws made by Congress.

The appellate court held that the deadline for her to appeal was jurisdictional and therefore the lower court had lacked authority to extend it so long. Accordingly the appellate court dismissed her appeal.

A unanimous Supreme Court disagreed. While the rule is in fact a rule, and failure to file a timely appeal still generally will warrant a dismissal, the Supreme Court held that  the deadline is not jurisdictional. It is merely a rule of court. It may be extended. To be jurisdictional, the Supreme Court held, it would have had to have been the product of Congressional legislation; the Supreme Court held it does not itself have the authority to create jurisdictional deadlines in its own rules. Accordingly, the dismissal of the appeal was vacated.

Source: Hamer v. Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago, No. 16-658 (U.S. Nov. 08, 2017), Court Opinion