Docket 24-275
Parrish
DecidedJun 12, 2025
6-3decision
Source: CourtListener.
Court rules inmates don't need to file a second appeal notice after a court reopens their appeal window
Impact3/10
What it does
A notice of appeal filed after the original deadline but before a court formally reopens the appeal period is treated as "early" rather than invalid, and it automatically carries forward to the date the court grants reopening. This means a litigant who already filed a notice of appeal does not have to file a second one after the court reopens the appeal window. The Fourth Circuit's ruling that dismissed Parrish's appeal for lack of a second notice is reversed.
Who benefits
Federal litigants — especially incarcerated people and self-represented (pro se) litigants — who miss the original appeal deadline because they did not receive the court's decision in time, and who file a notice of appeal before the court formally grants reopening of the appeal period.
Who is affected
Federal courts of appeals that had previously required a second, separate notice of appeal to be filed within a reopened appeal window in order to exercise jurisdiction over the case.
Practical impact
Federal litigants who file a notice of appeal late — because they did not receive the court's decision on time — and whose appeal window is subsequently reopened by the court will not lose their appeal simply because they did not file a second notice within the reopened 14-day window. Courts of appeals that had dismissed such appeals for lack of a second notice must now treat the original filing as sufficient. Incarcerated people, who often face delays in receiving court mail, are particularly protected by this ruling.
Majority — Sotomayor
Joined by: Roberts, Alito, Kagan, Kavanaugh, Barrett
The majority held that a notice of appeal filed before a court grants reopening is merely "early," not invalid, and that a longstanding legal background rule — called the "relation-forward" principle — applies: an adequate but premature notice of appeal is treated as filed on the date the document making the appeal possible is entered. The Court reasoned that Congress, when it created the reopening provision in 1991, would have expected this background rule to continue to apply, because nothing in the statute's text signals an intent to eliminate it. The majority emphasized that the entire purpose of a notice of appeal is to inform the other side and the court who is appealing, from what decision, and to which court — and when that information is already perfectly clear, dismissing an appeal on a technicality serves no legitimate purpose. The Court also found that the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure are consistent with this result: the Rules already codify the relation-forward principle in other contexts, the Rules Committee previously eliminated a requirement for duplicate notices because it created "a trap for unsuspecting litigants," and the Rules' silence on relation-forward in the reopening context does not imply it is forbidden. Requiring a second notice would be especially harmful to incarcerated and self-represented litigants, who may not receive the reopening order before the 14-day window expires.
Dissent reasoning
In dissent, Justice Gorsuch argued that the Court should have dismissed the case as improvidently granted — meaning the Court should not have taken it up in the first place. He noted that the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules had already begun studying whether to amend Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a)(6) to address exactly this problem, and that a rule change could have resolved the issue without a Supreme Court ruling. He expressed concern that by deciding the case now, the Court risks causing the Rules Committee to pause or abandon its own work, leading to less efficient resolution of the underlying procedural question. His position was that the Rules Committee — the body specifically charged with reviewing issues of this kind — should be allowed to complete that work rather than have the Court step in prematurely.
Constitutional question
When a federal court reopens the time to file an appeal because a litigant did not timely receive the court's decision, must the litigant file a brand-new notice of appeal within that reopened window — even if they already filed one before the window was reopened?
Precedent changed
The ruling reverses the Fourth Circuit's decision in Parrish v. United States, 74 F.4th 160 (4th Cir. 2023), and resolves a circuit split; it does not explicitly overrule any Supreme Court precedent, but extends the longstanding relation-forward principle to the reopening context under 28 U.S.C. §2107(c).