[Bartweiss]

Not a lawyer either, but this is markedly different than most appeal rulings I've read. It's pretty buttoned-up, but still acrid for this sort of writing.

The main thing isn't the tone, it's the focus. Overturning a lower court usually means talking about how a decision misapplied a test, failed to conform to precedent, enforced an unconstitutional law, or otherwise was coherent-but-wrong.

Here, the issue is that there's nothing subtle in the outcome. The ruling only mentions the relevant court decision and the dictionary citations, implying that that's all Gilstrap needed to get this right. It creates a pretty strong sense of "read the rules, idiot". The discussion of "physical is not virtual" seems especially damning, since it goes into enormous detail just to show that a 'place' is in fact a 'place', and not whatever non-corporeal entity Gilstrap wants it to be.

And, of course, it's a bit of a screw-you to Gilstrap's place in precedent. He outlined a four-part test for these suits, which is the sort of thing that becomes widely used and studied. And the appeals court struck down each branch of that test, meaning that the entire thing is now irrelevant.