At issue on appeal is whether Defendants-Appellants are entitled to summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds in a suit alleging claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and Texas state law. We lack jurisdiction to consider the merits of this appeal because the district court dismissed Defendants-Appellants’ motion for summary judgment as untimely. See Edwards v. Cass C’nty, 919 F.2d 273, 275-76 (5th Cir. 1990). We may, however, as both parties acknowledged in their letter briefs, properly treat this appeal as a petition for a writ of mandamus on the issue of timeliness. See id. at 276. Based on our review of the record, it appears that Defendants-Appellants’ summary-judgment motion was timely, in accordance with the deadlines in the first district judge’s docket-control order. 1 That order was still in effect after the case was transferred to the second district judge. 2

It is therefore unclear on this record why the district court deemed the summary-judgment motion untimely. Accordingly, we remand so that the district court may reexamine the timeliness of the motion or specify its reasons for denying the motion as untimely so that we might determine whether the district court abused its discretion in this regard.