The following are summaries of selected civil opinions issued by the Fifth Circuit in March 2025. The summaries are overviews of particular aspects of the opinions; please review the entire opinions.
APPELLATE JURISDICTION: Timely notice of appeal designating only order denying reconsideration allows appeal of intermediate postjudgment rulings.
Osborne v. Belton, 2025 WL 750348 (5th Cir. Mar. 10, 2025).
In Osborne v. Belton, the Fifth Circuit addressed a complex procedural posture involving successive post-judgment motions and their effect on appellate jurisdiction under the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure. The central issue was which district court orders were properly before the court for review based on the scope and timing of the notice of appeal.
Osborne sued his former landlord for disability discrimination under the Fair Housing Act and its Louisiana counterpart. The district court granted Osborne’s motion for summary judgment. Belton did not file a notice of appeal within the standard 30-day window.
Just about a year later, Belton filed a Rule 60(b) motion. After the district court denied that motion, Belton filed a Rule 59(e) motion seeking reconsideration. The district court denied reconsideration and Belton appealed, designating only the Rule 59(e) denial in the notice of appeal.
The Fifth Circuit interpreted FRAP 3(c)(5), added in 2021, to determine the scope of Belton’s notice of appeal. That Rule provides that “a notice of appeal encompasses the final judgment, whether or not that judgment is set out in the document identified in the notice of appeal, if the notice identifies” an order resolving all post-judgment motions.
The Fifth Circuit held that both the underlying judgment and the Rule 60(b) denial were within the notice’s scope. The Court interpreted FRAP 3(c)(5) to mean that a notice of appeal from a post-judgment ruling encompasses both the earlier final judgments and any intermediate post-judgment orders, so long as the Rule’s criteria are met. Broadly, the Court concluded that the 2021 amendments were meant to avoid unintended forfeiture of appellate rights.
Despite that liberal approach, however, the timeliness inquiry under FRAP 4(a) limited what the Court could review. Belton’s Rule 60(b) motion was not filed within 28 days of the summary judgment (required to toll the appeal deadline for the original judgment), so appellate review of the summary judgment was untimely and thus barred. But his Rule 59(e) motion was timely filed within 28 days of the Rule 60(b) denial, thereby tolling the deadline for that order. And his notice of appeal was filed within 30 days of the Rule 59(e) denial, making appellate review of both the Rule 60(b) and Rule 59(e) orders timely.
Finally, the Court clarified that a denial of a Rule 59(e) motion is not independently appealable; it merges with the decision it challenges. Thus, only the Rule 60(b) denial was properly reviewable on the merits.
MOOTNESS: Rescission of challenged policy may not moot a case when there are plausible allegations of lingering adverse consequences and no formal policy change prohibiting future similar harms.
Jackson v. Noem, 2025 WL 868167 (5th Cir. Mar. 10, 2025)
This decision clarifies that rescission of a challenged policy does not necessarily moot a case when there are plausible allegations of lingering adverse consequences and no formal policy change prohibiting future similar harms.
Plaintiffs, active-duty Coast Guard servicemembers, sued to challenge the Coast Guard’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate, alleging constitutional and statutory violations.
While the suit was pending, Congress enacted a law requiring rescission of a similar Department of Defense mandate. Although not within DOD, the Coast Guard similarly rescinded its own COVID-19 vaccination mandate and halted involuntary separations for noncompliance. Based on this development, the district court dismissed the suit as moot.
The Fifth Circuit reversed. The Court emphasized that a case becomes moot only when it is “impossible for a court to grant any effectual relief whatever to the prevailing party.” But mere rescission of a policy does not always moot a case—particularly if lingering effects of that policy continue to harm the plaintiffs.
The Court compared two prior decisions evaluation vaccine-mandate recessions to evaluate the Coast Guard’s recession here. In one, the court found the case moot because the Navy had not only rescinded its mandate but also issued binding policies prohibiting discrimination based on vaccination status (e.g., banning use of vaccination status in deployment or training decisions).
In another, the Air Force was found not to have mooted the controversy because it maintained a flawed religious accommodation process and had not affirmatively disavowed reliance on vaccination status in personnel decisions.
The Court found that the Coast Guard’s rescission was closer to the Air Force’s than the Navy’s. Although the Coast Guard rescinded the mandate, it had not adopted any affirmative policies preventing future use of vaccination status in decisions affecting training, deployment, or promotion.
The plaintiffs’ claims remained alive because they alleged ongoing reputational harm within the close-knit Coast Guard culture due to their refusal to obey what is still considered a “lawful order.” The Court that judgment declaring the mandate unlawful could redress this harm, especially given the Coast Guard’s opaque promotion processes where informal reputation plays a significant role.