We'll hear argument this afternoon in the Geo Group versus Menocult. Mr. Drey.

Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court, the government can act only through agents,

either employees or non-employee contractors. And the common law draws no distinction between public

servants and private individuals engaged in public service.

That makes sense.

Contractors following the government's instructions are immune from suit for the same reason

government employees are immune.

That is, they are doing the sovereign's work.

Now, to be sure, their immunity is not the same as the sovereigns.

The sovereign is immune from suit unless it

has waived its immunity. Its agents are only immune when they satisfy certain conditions.

The most familiar example is government employees qualified immunity. For contractors,

the conditions for immunity are most famously articulated in Yersley. Namely, what was done was

within the constitutional power of Congress, and the contractor performed in compliance with all

federal directions. When those conditions are met, a private party doing the government's work

is immune from suit. If, however, a district court concludes as a matter of law that those conditions are

unmet, as occurred here, that holding is an appealable collateral order. The yearly conditions

are dispositive of the contractors of surterd immunity and separate from the underlying merits,

and because an immunity from suit is at issue, waiting until the end of trial and

taking appeal only then is not an adequate alternative. Orders denying contractors' immunity,

therefore, fit comfortably within this Court's precedent, permitting immediate appeals of any number

of other immunities. The Court should therefore reverse the Tenth Circuit's dismissal

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