Cate v. Pirtle
Headline: Court sends four appeals back to the Ninth Circuit for reconsideration under a recent ruling, allows those four to proceed without prepaying fees, and denies review for one other appeal, leaving that result in place.
Holding: The Court granted review for four individuals, allowed them to proceed without prepaying fees, vacated the Ninth Circuit’s judgments as to those four, and sent their cases back for reconsideration in light of Swarthout, while denying review for one person.
- Sends four cases back for reconsideration under the Court’s guidance.
- Allows four individuals to proceed without prepaying court fees.
- Denies review for one person, leaving that result unchanged.
Summary
Background
Four individuals (John H. Pirtle, Robert Everett Johnson, Anthony Sneed, and Michael Craig Slater) asked the Supreme Court to review decisions coming from the Ninth Circuit, and each asked permission to proceed without prepaying court fees. Another person, Ron Mosley, also sought review. The petitions asked the Court to consider whether the Ninth Circuit’s earlier judgments should stand.
Reasoning
The Court decided it would not resolve the merits itself but said those four cases must be reconsidered in light of a recent Supreme Court decision called Swarthout v. Cooke. The Court granted the fee‑waiver requests for the four people, erased the Ninth Circuit’s judgments as to them, and sent their cases back to the appeals court to rethink in light of Swarthout. The Court rejected review for Ron Mosley, leaving the lower-court outcome unchanged for him.
Real world impact
Practically, the four people will get another review by the Ninth Circuit that must take the Supreme Court’s guidance into account, and they were allowed to continue without paying fees up front. Because this order simply sends cases back for reconsideration and does not decide the underlying disputes, the final outcomes could still change. For the person whose petition was denied, the earlier appeals-court result remains in effect.
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