42
Opinion of the Court
gress in § 1291, but as a 'practical construction' of it." Digital Equipment Corp. v. Desktop Direct, Inc., 511 U. S. 863, 867 (1994) (quoting Cohen, 337 U. S., at 546). In Cohen, we held that § 1291 permits appeals not only from a final decision by which a district court disassociates itself from a case, but also from a small category of decisions that, although they do not end the litigation, must nonetheless be considered "final." Id., at 546. That small category includes only decisions that are conclusive, that resolve important questions separate from the merits, and that are effectively unreviewable on appeal from the final judgment in the underlying action. Ibid.
The District Court planned to reconsider its ruling on the county commission's summary judgment motion before the case went to the jury. That court had initially determined only that "Sheriff Morgan . . . may have been the final policy maker for the County." App. to Pet. for Cert. 67a (emphasis added). The ruling thus fails the Cohen test, which "disallow[s] appeal from any decision which is tentative, informal or incomplete." 337 U. S., at 546; see Coopers & Lybrand v. Livesay, 437 U. S. 463, 469 (1978) (order denying class certification held not appealable under collateral order doctrine, in part because such an order is "subject to revision in the District Court").
Moreover, the order denying the county commission's summary judgment motion does not satisfy Cohen's requirement that the decision be effectively unreviewable after final judgment. When we placed within the collateral order doctrine decisions denying pleas of government officials for qualified immunity, we stressed that an official's qualified immunity is "an immunity from suit rather than a mere defense to liability; and like an absolute immunity, it is effectively lost if a case is erroneously permitted to go to trial." Mitchell, 472 U. S., at 526 (emphasis in original).
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