Even Where the Underlying Defense Is Qualified Immunity, There is No Collateral-Order Appeal from a District Court’s Denying a Dispositive Motion That Exceeds the Page Limits Set by Local Rules, Holds Tenth Circuit

In Jefferson v. Moore, No. 25-3020 (10th Cir. June 5, 2026), the Tenth Circuit dismisses an appeal of a qualified immunity defense where the district court “denied the motion without prejudice” because “Defendants’ motion exceeded the page limits set by the local rules and, alternatively, that their motion for summary judgment was premature.”

In response to a pro se prisoner civil rights case, defendants filed a “Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings or, in the Alternative, for Summary Judgment,” contending “that Plaintiff’s claims against Defendants in their official capacities were barred by Eleventh Amendment immunity and that the claims against them in their individual capacities were barred by qualified immunity.”

The district court summarily denied the motion without waiting for the plaintiff’s response. It gave two reasons for this denial.

“First, the court took issue with the length and structure of the [Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(c)] Motion. Noting that Defendants ‘styled their motion as one for judgment on the pleadings under Rule 12 and seek dismissal for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction and for failure to state a claim,’ the court ruled that ‘the length of the [Motion] far exceeds that permitted for Rule 12 motions’ under Local Rule 7.1(d) of the Kansas federal district court.”

Second, the district court found the motion premature “insofar as it sought summary judgment because of timing considerations,” there having been no answer or discovery.

Defendants then “filed this interlocutory appeal, asserting jurisdiction under the collateral-order doctrine.”

The Tenth Circuit dismisses the appeal for lack of appellate jurisdiction.

“[N]ot every delay in ruling on qualified immunity merits interlocutory appeal . . . . [Here,] the only thing that Defendants were deprived of was the opportunity to circumvent ordinary ‘pretrial proceedings relating to [the] disposition of [a] motion.’”

“If [Defendants] wished to have the district court rule on their motion for judgment on the pleadings, all they needed to do was resubmit it as a separate motion subject to the local rules limiting its length. The burden of doing so is not the sort of litigation burden that justifies interlocutory appeal.”

“As for the district court’s ruling that a summary-judgment motion would be premature, that decision (which, by the way, we think a prudent one) would not imperil any substantial public interest . . . . there would be no substantial burden on Defendants’ immunity from litigation by awaiting resolution of the motion for judgment on the pleadings and any discovery relevant to immunity.”