THOMAS PERTTU, PETITIONER v. KYLE BRANDON RICHARDS
No. 23-1324
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
June 18, 2025
OCTOBER TERM, 2024
Syllabus
NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
PERTTU v. RICHARDS
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
No. 23-1324 Argued February 25, 2025-Decided June 18, 2025
The Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) requires prisoners with complaints about prison conditions to exhaust available grievance procedures before filing suit in federal court.
In this case, inmate Kyle Richards alleges that Thomas Perttu, a prison employee, sexually harassed Richards and other inmates. Richards also alleges that, when he attempted to file grievance documents about the abuse, Perttu destroyed them and “retaliated against him” for attempting to file them. Richards sued Perttu under
Held: Parties are entitled to a jury trial on PLRA exhaustion when that issue
(a) Before reaching Richards‘s arguments for why his Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial has been violated, the Court must first determine whether a construction of the PLRA is “fairly possible” by which the constitutional question may be avoided. Monterey v. Del Monte Dunes at Monterey, Ltd., 526 U. S. 687, 707. Such a construction is possible here. Because the Court construes the PLRA to require a jury trial in Richards‘s case, the Court need not address whether Congress could have required otherwise in the PLRA without violating the Seventh Amendment.
PLRA exhaustion is a standard affirmative defense subject to “the usual practice” under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Jones v. Bock, 549 U. S. 199, 212. The usual practice is that factual disputes regarding legal claims go to the jury, even if that means a judge must let a jury decide questions he could ordinarily resolve on his own. Beacon Theatres, Inc. v. Westover, 359 U. S. 500, 510-511. That usual practice matters for interpreting the PLRA because “Congress is understood to legislate against a background of common-law adjudicatory principles... with an expectation that the principle[s] will apply except ‘when a statutory purpose to the contrary is evident.‘” Astoria Fed. Sav. & Loan Assn. v. Solimino, 501 U. S. 104, 108 (quoting Isbrandtsen Co. v. Johnson, 343 U. S. 779, 783). No such contrary purpose is evident in the PLRA. The PLRA is “silent” on whether judges or juries should resolve exhaustion disputes, and that silence is “strong evidence that the usual practice should be followed.” Jones, 549 U. S., at 212. Pp. 5-8.
(b) At the time the PLRA was enacted, it was well established that factual disputes intertwined with claims that fall under the Seventh Amendment should go to a jury. The Court has held in various contexts that, in cases of intertwinement, district courts should structure their order of operations to preserve the jury trial right. Pp. 8-12.
(1) One prominent line of cases involves suits that contain both legal and equitable claims. Ordinarily, judges resolve equitable claims and juries resolve legal claims. In Beacon Theatres, this Court held that judges may not resolve equitable claims first if doing so could prevent legal claims from getting to the jury. In that case, both the legal and equitable claims hinged on the “common issue” whether there was an antitrust violation. 359 U. S. 500, 503. The Court emphasized that in that situation, judicial “discretion is very narrowly limited and must, wherever possible, be exercised to preserve jury trial.” Id., at 510. Because resolving the equitable claims could “prevent a full jury trial” on the legal claims, the legal claims first needed to be resolved by a jury. Id., at 505, 508. In this case, the parties agree that the exhaustion and First Amendment questions depend on common factual issues, and Beacon Theatres teaches that a trial court must preserve the jury trial in such a situation whenever possible. Nothing in the PLRA prevents holding a jury trial here. Pp. 8-10.
(2) Cases involving subject matter jurisdiction are also instructive. Ordinarily, judges may resolve factual disputes when determining subject matter jurisdiction. But courts may not do so when the factual disputes are intertwined with the merits. In Smithers v. Smith, 204 U. S. 632, the Court held that
In its decision below, the Sixth Circuit relied on its precedent applying Land, reasoning that if “certain cases [must] be heard and determined on the merits even when constitutionally implicated jurisdictional disputes” are at play, then “the result should be the same when the lesser concern of an affirmative defense, such as the PLRA‘s requirement to exhaust administrative remedies, implicates the merits of a claim.” 96 F. 4th, at 923. The Court finds this reasoning persuasive. After all, when the PLRA was enacted, many lower court decisions and treatises had extended the intertwinement principle to other threshold questions, like personal jurisdiction and venue. The Court expresses no view today on whether lower courts have been correct to extend the intertwinement principle to these other issues, but simply notes that these cases-along with Beacon Theatres and Smithers-show that when the PLRA was enacted, the usual practice in the federal courts across a variety of contexts was to resolve factual disputes that are intertwined with the merits at the merits stage. Pp. 10-12.
(c) Perttu‘s counterarguments are unpersuasive. Perttu argues that Beacon Theatres is inapplicable, but his argument relies on the questionable assumption that judicial factual findings concerning exhaustion have no estoppel effect in later jury trials. Regardless, even if Perttu is correct about estoppel, Beacon Theatres still applies when judicial resolution might prevent a full jury trial for other reasons. Here, Richards‘s claim is being dismissed entirely rather than just estopped, and it is usually impossible for prisoners to go back and exhaust then file suit again, because grievance deadlines will have long since passed. Perttu‘s argument that jury trials conflict with the PLRA‘s purpose of conserving judicial resources also fails, because the PLRA contemplates that merits claims will be resolved by a jury and is silent about exhaustion. The usual federal court practice in cases of intertwinement is to send common issues to the jury, and nothing in the PLRA suggests Congress intended to depart from that practice. Pp. 12-16.
96 F. 4th 911, affirmed.
Opinion of the Court
NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, pio@supremecourt.gov, of any typographical or other formal errors.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
No. 23-1324
THOMAS PERTTU, PETITIONER v. KYLE BRANDON RICHARDS
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
[June 18, 2025]
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PLRA) requires prisoners with complaints about prison conditions to exhaust available grievance procedures before bringing suit in federal court.
Richards sued Perttu for violating his constitutional rights, including his First Amendment right to file grievances. Perttu responded that Richards had failed to exhaust available grievance procedures as required by the PLRA. The parties agree that the exhaustion and First Amendment issues are intertwined, because both depend on whether Perttu did in fact destroy Richards‘s grievances and retaliate against him. The question presented is whether a party has a right to a jury trial on PLRA exhaustion when that dispute is intertwined with the merits of the underlying suit.
I
A
“Our legal system [is] committed to guaranteeing that prisoner claims of illegal conduct by their custodians are fairly handled according to law.” Jones v. Bock, 549 U. S. 199, 203 (2007). “The challenge,” however, “lies in ensuring that the flood of nonmeritorious claims does not submerge and effectively preclude consideration of the allegations with merit.” Ibid. To address that challenge, Congress enacted the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995, 94 Stat. 352,
A “centerpiece” of the PLRA is its exhaustion provision. Woodford v. Ngo, 548 U. S. 81, 84 (2006). It provides:
“No action shall be brought with respect to prison conditions under [
42 U. S. C. §1983 ], or any other Federal law, by a prisoner confined in any jail, prison, or other correctional facility until such administrative remedies as are available are exhausted.”§1997e(a) .
We have held that this provision “requires proper exhaustion” of available prison grievance procedures, meaning a prisoner “must complete the administrative review process in accordance with the applicable procedural rules... as a precondition to bringing suit in federal court.” Woodford, 548 U. S., at 88, 93. But “exhaustion is not required” when a prison administrator “threaten[s] individual inmates so as to prevent their use of otherwise proper procedures.” Ross v. Blake, 578 U. S. 632, 644 (2016). As we have explained, “such interference with an inmate‘s pursuit of relief renders the administrative process unavailable,” so “§1997e(a) poses no bar” to suit. Ibid.
B
In 2020, Richards and two other prisoners filed this suit against Perttu under
Perttu moved for summary judgment, arguing that the plaintiffs had failed to exhaust available grievance procedures as required by the PLRA. To support his motion, Perttu submitted an affidavit from a prison grievance coordinator attesting that there was no record evidence of the plaintiffs filing grievances about sexual abuse by Perttu in 2019 or 2020. The plaintiffs responded by reiterating that Perttu had intercepted and destroyed those grievances and had warned them not to file more. The Magistrate Judge concluded that there was “a genuine issue of fact as to whether Plaintiffs were excused from properly exhausting their claims due to interference by Perttu” and that the issue was “appropriate for resolution during an evidentiary hearing.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 86a.
The Magistrate Judge held the evidentiary hearing by video conference in November 2021. App. 88. Richards, representing himself, conducted direct examinations of multiple witnesses who testified that they had seen Perttu destroy Richards‘s grievance forms and retaliate against him for filing them. See, e.g., id., at 210-214, 230, 234-238, 250-255. Perttu denied doing so. Id., at 339-341. The Magistrate Judge concluded that Richards‘s witnesses “lacked credibility” because their testimony “was either substantially guided by Richards‘s manner of questioning or wholly conclusory.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 69a. The Magistrate Judge therefore recommended the case be dismissed without prejudice for failure to exhaust. Id., at 76a. The District Court adopted the recommendation. Id., at 28a-29a.
C
Richards appealed to the Sixth Circuit. Still representing himself, he argued that resolving exhaustion through “a bench trial“-one before a judge without a jury-is “not permissible where it would essentially be resolving a claim itself.” Brief for Appellant in No. 22-1298, p. 1. After appointing counsel for Richards and requesting supplemental briefing, the Sixth Circuit reversed. It acknowledged that, under Circuit precedent, there was “no doubt that a judge may otherwise resolve factual disputes regarding exhaustion under the PLRA.” 96 F. 4th 911, 917 (2024) (citing Lee v. Willey, 789 F. 3d 673, 677 (CA6 2015)). But the court held that “the Seventh Amendment requires a jury trial when the resolution of the exhaustion issue under the PLRA would also resolve a genuine dispute of material fact regarding the merits of the plaintiff‘s substantive case.” 96 F. 4th, at 923. That decision conflicted with a contrary holding on the same question from the Seventh Circuit, see Pavey v. Conley, 544 F. 3d 739, 742 (2008), and we granted certiorari to resolve the split. 603 U. S. ___ (2024).
II
“The right to trial
Our precedents make clear that “[b]efore inquiring into the applicability of the Seventh Amendment, we must ‘first ascertain whether a construction of the statute is fairly possible by which the [constitutional] question may be avoided.‘” Del Monte Dunes, 526 U. S., at 707 (quoting Feltner v. Columbia Pictures Television, Inc., 523 U. S. 340, 345 (1998)). Such a construction is possible here. PLRA exhaustion is an affirmative defense subject to “the usual practice under the Federal Rules [of Civil Procedure].” Jones, 549 U. S., at 212. The usual practice is that factual disputes regarding the merits of a legal claim go to the jury, even if that means a judge must let a jury decide questions he could ordinarily decide on his own. See Beacon Theatres, Inc. v. Westover, 359 U. S. 500, 510-511 (1959). That usual practice matters for interpreting the statute because “Congress is understood to legislate against a background of common-law adjudicatory principles... with an expectation that the principle[s] will apply except ‘when a statutory purpose to the contrary is evident.‘” Astoria Fed. Sav. & Loan Assn. v. Solimino, 501 U. S. 104, 108 (1991) (quoting Isbrandtsen Co. v. Johnson, 343 U. S. 779, 783 (1952)). No such contrary purpose is evident in the PLRA.
For those reasons, we hold as a matter of statutory interpretation that parties have a right to a jury trial on PLRA exhaustion when that issue is intertwined with the merits of a claim that falls under the Seventh Amendment. In light of this holding, we express no view today on whether Congress could have required otherwise in the PLRA without violating a party‘s Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial. See Byrd v. Blue Ridge Rural Elec. Cooperative, Inc., 356 U. S. 525, 537, and n. 10 (1958) (holding that affirmative defense should go to jury due to “the manner in which [the federal system] distributes trial functions between judge and jury,” making it “unnecessary” to consider “the constitutional
A
We begin with a settled premise: PLRA exhaustion is a standard affirmative defense. Jones, 549 U. S., at 216. As we said in Woodford, 548 U. S., at 101, PLRA exhaustion is “not jurisdictional,” which is why “a district court [is allowed] to dismiss plainly meritless claims without first addressing” the often “more complex question” of exhaustion. And as we said in Jones, 549 U. S., at 216, PLRA exhaustion is not a “pleading requirement,” which is why “inmates are not required to specially plead or demonstrate exhaustion in their complaints.” Rather, PLRA exhaustion is an “affirmative defense” subject to “the usual practice under the Federal Rules.” Id., at 212. And that usual practice applies, Jones explained, even though the PLRA is “silent on the issue,” because that silence is itself “strong evidence that the usual practice should be followed.” Ibid.
The PLRA is similarly “silent on the issue” whether judges or juries should resolve factual disputes related to exhaustion. The exhaustion provision states simply that “[n]o action shall be brought with respect to prison conditions... until such administrative remedies as are available are exhausted.”
Just like in Jones, then, the statutory silence on the question before us “is strong evidence that the usual practice should be followed.” Id., at 212; see also Dixon v. United States, 548 U. S. 1, 17 (2006) (“In light of Congress’ silence on the issue... it is up to the federal courts to effectuate the affirmative defense... as Congress may have contemplated it... given the long-established common-law rule.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). We therefore look to the usual practice for resolving factual disputes intertwined with the merits.2
The PLRA was enacted in 1996. By that time, it was well established that when a factual dispute is intertwined with the merits of a claim that falls under the Seventh Amendment, that dispute should go to a jury, even if that requires judges to defer determinations they would ordinarily make on their own. We have accordingly held in various contexts that, in cases of intertwinement, district courts should structure their order of operations to preserve the jury trial right.
1
One prominent line of cases involves suits that contain both legal and equitable claims. Ordinarily, judges resolve equitable claims and juries resolve legal claims. But in Beacon Theatres, 359 U. S., at 510-511, we held that judges may not resolve equitable claims first if doing so could prevent legal claims from getting to the jury.
Beacon Theatres involved an antitrust dispute between two movie theater companies. One company brought an equitable claim for a declaratory judgment that it had not violated antitrust laws. The other company brought a legal
claim for money damages alleging that the first company had violated antitrust laws. Both the equitable and legal claims therefore hinged on the “common issue” whether there was an antitrust violation. Id., at 503. Faced with this dilemma, we emphasized that, while judges ordinarily have “discretion in deciding whether the legal or equitable cause should be tried first,” “that discretion is very narrowly limited and must, wherever possible, be exercised to preserve jury trial.” Id., at 510; see also id., at 510-511 (“[O]nly under the most imperative circumstances, circumstances which in view of the flexible procedures of the Federal Rules we cannot now anticipate, can the right to a jury trial of legal issues be lost through prior determination of equitable claims.” (footnote omitted)). The consequence in that case was clear: Because resolving the equitable claims could “prevent a full jury trial” on the legal claims, the legal claims first needed to be resolved by a jury. Id., at 505, 508. The district court‘s decision to instead resolve the equitable claims first was therefore “not permissible.” Id., at 508.
Later cases confirm that Beacon Theatres should be read “expansively,” applying to any claim triable by a jury even “in a suit in which the basic relief sought is equitable.” 9 C. Wright & A. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure §2302.1, pp. 33-34 (4th ed. 2020). For example, in Dairy Queen, Inc. v. Wood, 369 U. S. 469, 473, 475 (1962), the plaintiff alleged that the defendant had breached a contract for use of the trademark “Dairy Queen,” and the plaintiff sought both legal and equitable relief. We observed that the legal and equitable claims therefore depended on “common” “factual issues related to the question of whether there [had] been a breach of contract.” Id., at 479. For that reason, the consequence was again clear: “[T]he district judge erred in refusing to grant petitioner‘s demand for a trial by jury.” Ibid.
In this case, the parties agree that the exhaustion and First Amendment questions depend on common factual issues. And Beacon Theatres teaches that a trial court‘s discretion in such a situation is “very narrowly limited and must, wherever possible, be exercised to preserve jury trial.” 359 U. S., at 510. Nothing in the
2
Our cases involving subject matter jurisdiction are also instructive. Ordinarily, judges may resolve factual disputes in the course of determining whether subject matter jurisdiction is proper. See Wetmore v. Rymer, 169 U. S. 115, 120-121 (1898). But we have long held that a court may not do so when the factual disputes are intertwined with the merits.
For example, in Smithers v. Smith, 204 U. S. 632, 641-642 (1907), the district court concluded that it lacked subject matter jurisdiction because the case did not meet the $2,000 amount-in-controversy requirement. The district court did so, however, by finding that even if the defendants had each taken a part of the plaintiff‘s land-as the plaintiff alleged-the defendants had not acted jointly, and so the aggregate amount in controversy did not exceed $2,000. Id., at 645-646. We reversed because we found that, in arriving at this conclusion, the district court had decided a factual question that was “an essential element of the merits of the dispute“-whether the defendants had acted jointly-and so had “in effect, decided the controversy between the parties upon the merits.” Id., at 646. We acknowledged that judges ordinarily have “the authority to dismiss [an] action [for lack of subject matter jurisdiction] without trial by jury.” Id., at 644-645. But we held that this authority “obviously is not unlimited,” “lest under the guise of determining jurisdiction the merits of the controversy between the parties be summarily decided without the ordinary incidents of a trial, including the right to a jury.” Id., at 645.
We applied similar analysis in Land v. Dollar, 330 U. S. 731 (1947). There the district court concluded that it lacked subject matter jurisdiction due to sovereign immunity, because the suit for unlawful possession of stock shares by federal officials was in fact a suit “against the United States.” Id., at 734. We recognized that “as a general rule the District Court would have authority to consider questions of jurisdiction.” Id., at 735. But we found that Land was “the type of case where the question of jurisdiction is dependent on decision of the merits,” because both questions hinged on the plaintiffs’ claims that “the shares of stock never were property of the United States.” Id., at 735, 738. We therefore held that the district court should have “proceed[ed] to a decision on the merits” rather than resolve the jurisdictional issue at a preliminary stage. Id., at 739. See Gulf Oil Corp. v. Copp Paving Co., 419 U. S. 186, 203, n. 19 (1974) (acknowledging practice of “reserving the jurisdictional issues” when there is “an identity between the ‘jurisdictional’ issues and certain issues on the merits“); see also 8 J. Moore, D. Coquillette, G. Joseph, G. Vairo, & C. Varner, Moore‘s Federal Practice §38.34[1][c][i], p. 38-154 (3d ed. 2024) (Moore); 5B C. Wright, A. Miller, & A. Spencer, Federal Practice and Procedure §1350, pp. 224-226 (4th ed. 2024).
In its decision below, the Sixth Circuit relied on its Circuit precedent applying Land, reasoning that if “certain cases [must] be heard and determined on the merits even when constitutionally implicated jurisdictional disputes” are at play, then “the result should be the same when the lesser concern of an affirmative defense, such as the PLRA‘s requirement to exhaust administrative remedies, implicates
C
Perttu offers important counterarguments, but we are ultimately not persuaded. First, Perttu argues that Beacon Theatres is inapplicable here. According to Perttu, the concern in Beacon Theatres was that judicial resolution of the equitable claims would have had collateral estoppel effect on the legal claims. But here, Perttu says, the judge‘s factual findings related to exhaustion would have no such effect in a later jury trial.
Two Circuits have suggested they agree with Perttu that factual findings related to exhaustion have no estoppel effect, but with little analysis and in cases that did not squarely present an estoppel issue. See Pavey, 544 F. 3d, at 742; Albino v. Baca, 747 F. 3d 1162, 1171 (CA9 2014). Legal treatises, on the other hand, provide support for the proposition that factual determinations in a first action can have direct estoppel effect in a second action on the same claim. See Restatement (Second) of Judgments §27, Comment b, Illustration 3, Comment d, pp. 251-255 (1980); 18 C. Wright, A. Miller, & E. Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure §4418, pp. 505-506 (3d ed. 2016). The Restatement gives an example analogous to the situation before us: If a court dismisses a case for lack of personal jurisdiction based on a particular factual finding, that factual finding has preclusive effect in a subsequent action on issues beyond just personal jurisdiction. Restatement (Second) of Judgments §27, Illustration 3, p. 252.3 Perttu also overlooks the fact that, if the judge below had ruled that Perttu did destroy Richards‘s grievances, then Perttu himself may have been precluded from relitigating that issue before the jury under law of the case. See 18B C. Wright, A. Miller, & E. Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure §4478.5, p. 773 (3d ed. 2019).
We therefore cannot reject the possibility that a judicial ruling on PLRA exhaustion might have estoppel effect in a later jury trial. And Beacon Theatres shows that the proper path in that situation is to hold
Regardless, even if Perttu is right that factual findings concerning exhaustion have no estoppel effect in a later jury trial, we decline to limit Beacon Theatres artificially to cases involving estoppel. The problem in Beacon Theatres was that judicial resolution of a “common issue” might have “prevent[ed] a full jury trial” on the legal claims. 359 U. S., at 503, 505, 508. Estoppel was simply the reason why a “full jury trial” might have been “prevent[ed]” in that case. Id., at 505 (“[T]o try the equitable cause first might, through collateral estoppel, prevent a full jury trial.” (emphasis added)). The principle of Beacon Theatres still applies when judicial resolution of a common issue might “prevent a full jury trial” for some reason other than estoppel. And here, that other reason is clear. Instead of just being estopped, Richards‘s claim is being dismissed entirely. We therefore agree with the Sixth Circuit‘s reasoning: Even as-suming Perttu is right that a jury may “reexamine the judge‘s factual findings,” that “rationale” “rings hollow if the prisoner‘s case is dismissed for failure to exhaust,” because “[i]n such an instance, a jury would never be assembled to resolve the factual disputes.” 96 F. 4th, at 921.
It is no answer, in our view, to say that a prisoner might someday get a jury by starting over, exhausting the grievance procedures, then refiling his lawsuit. After all, that path is impossible in most cases. As Perttu acknowledged at oral argument, “the time frames for... grievances are very short“-on the order of days. Tr. of Oral Arg. 35; see, e.g., Jones, 549 U. S., at 207 (grievance deadlines of 2 to 5 days); Woodford, 548 U. S., at 95-96 (grievance deadlines of 14 to 30 days). By the time a case is dismissed for failure to exhaust, grievance deadlines will have long since passed. But Perttu makes no argument that such deadlines are tolled in these situations. Instead, he points to the fact that
prison administrators in some (but not all) jurisdictions have discretion to excuse missed grievance deadlines, with no evidence of how often administrators actually exercise that discretion, let alone in cases where-as here-doing so would foreseeably set up a second lawsuit. And though Perttu makes a different argument for why Richards could exhaust and refile in this case,5 he
Finally, Perttu argues that requiring a jury trial here would conflict with the purpose of PLRA exhaustion, which is to conserve judicial resources by preventing unexhausted
claims from going to trial. For support, Perttu cites our decision in Katchen v. Landy, 382 U. S. 323 (1966). There we held that a bankruptcy court could proceed to decide an equitable claim-even if similar issues might one day arise before a jury on a legal claim-because to prevent the equitable claim from being “tried in the bankruptcy court in the normal manner” would be “to dismember a scheme which Congress has prescribed.” Id., at 339.
But Katchen is clearly far afield. That case involved a “specific statutory scheme“-bankruptcy-“contemplating the prompt trial of a disputed claim without the intervention of a jury” in a special set of courts created for that purpose. Ibid. The equivalent “statutory scheme” here-the PLRA-contemplates that Richards‘s First Amendment claim will be resolved by a jury and is silent about whether a jury should resolve exhaustion.
Perttu responds that holding a jury trial on exhaustion nonetheless conflicts with congressional intent because the point of PLRA exhaustion is to ensure that only exhausted claims go to trial. But that objection would apply with even greater force in Smithers and Land, because-by the same logic-holding a trial on subject matter jurisdiction would conflict with the purpose of ensuring that trials happen only where jurisdiction is proper. See Ex parte McCardle, 7 Wall. 506, 514 (1869) (“Without jurisdiction the court cannot proceed at all in any cause.“). Yet Smithers and Land show that, in cases of intertwinement, the proper practice is indeed to go to trial. We therefore cannot agree with Perttu that the PLRA‘s general interest in conserving judicial resources shows that Congress clearly intended for judges to resolve exhaustion disputes in this unique circumstance.
*
*
*
If Congress had expressly provided in the PLRA that exhaustion disputes must be resolved by judges, then we
would have been required to consider today whether such a provision violates the
The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
JUSTICE BARRETT, with whom JUSTICE THOMAS, JUSTICE ALITO, and JUSTICE KAVANAUGH join, dissenting.
The Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PLRA) requires prisoners suing under
The Court takes a different path. Instead of resolving the constitutional question that the parties brought to us, the Court holds that the
Having taken this detour, the Court ends up in the wrong place. Reading the
I
Kyle Richards, a state prisoner, sued Thomas Perttu, a prison employee, for damages under
Because a damages suit under
This dispute about the facts engendered another about the law—and more specifically, about the role of the jury. The
Although the Sixth Circuit has long embraced this rule, see Lee v. Willey, 789 F. 3d 673, 678 (2015), Richards argued that his case was special—and the Sixth Circuit agreed. An exception applies, it held, “when the resolution of the exhaustion issue . . . would also resolve a genuine dispute of material fact regarding the merits of the plaintiff‘s substantive case.” 96 F. 4th 911, 923 (2024). In such cases, the Sixth Circuit held, the
II
Having granted certiorari to resolve this split, I would reverse. The jury-trial right conferred by the
Because the
The parties devote much of their time to debating the best founding-era analogue to the exhaustion defense. According to Richards, exhaustion is analogous to common-law defenses that would have been raised through a plea in bar.2 Under the common-law pleading system, Richards argues, the parties’ dueling pleas would isolate disputed points of law and fact, with the former allocated to a judge and the latter allocated to a jury. See H. Stephen, Principles of Pleading in Civil Actions 59-61 (1882); B. Shipman, Handbook of Common-Law Pleading §15, p. 32 (3d ed. 1923). Perttu, on the other hand, grounds exhaustion in traditional equitable practice. In his view, an exhaustion defense most closely resembles a defensive equitable action to enjoin a lawsuit—an action that would have been heard by the chancellor, not a jury. Liberty Oil Co. v. Condon Nat. Bank, 260 U. S. 235, 242-243 (1922).
The Court does not get into this back-and-forth—and here, I agree with the Court. We did not take this case to determine whether the
Answering the question presented, however, would not have required us to resolve these knotty issues. We granted certiorari to decide the same limited issue that the Sixth Circuit decided: whether a special
The upshot is that there is no historical support for a special intertwinement rule. Mere factual overlap with the merits does not transform a collateral issue ordinarily resolved by a court into one necessarily resolved by a jury. We could have corrected that constitutional error and saved the broader, more complicated debate for another day.
III
Remarkably, in this
This is wrong several times over. Richards did not present this statutory theory to us or any other court; the
A
To begin, the Court spins a statutory theory that Richards has never even mentioned, much less developed.3 Before us, Richards argues only that he has a constitutional right to a jury trial. Both his Brief in Opposition and his merits brief focus exclusively on the
See Brief for Respondent 3 (“[T]he
In light of this procedural history, the Court‘s path is perplexing. We typically refuse to consider arguments that the parties failed to make before us. See Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U. S. 844, 863, n. 30 (1997). Likewise, “we normally decline to entertain arguments” that a party “failed to raise . . . in the courts below.” Kingdomware Technologies, Inc. v. United States, 579 U. S. 162, 173 (2016). And we regularly emphasize that “we are a court of review, not of first view,” so we generally do not address issues that the court of appeals did not analyze first. Cutter v. Wilkinson, 544 U. S. 709, 718, n. 7 (2005). (Making matters worse, it is not clear that any court has considered the statutory question the Court resolves today.) Apparently, these party-presentation principles have no purchase here. Without any prompting from the parties, the Court devises and embraces a theory that Richards himself never raised—all, ironically enough, to save his case from dismissal for an alleged failure to exhaust.
Nor does the Court depart from party presentation in service of a sound result. Its analysis goes wrong at every turn, beginning with its choice to venture beyond statutory text into the realm of statutory silence.
As the Court recognizes, the
“No action shall be brought with respect to prison conditions under [
42 U. S. C. §1983 ], or any other Federal law, by a prisoner confined in any jail, prison, or other correctional facility until such administrative remedies as are available are exhausted.”§1997e(a) .
Notwithstanding this silence, the Court says that the
It is true that Congress sometimes legislates against the backdrop of a well-established principle. For example, relying on the “strength of the traditional rule” that criminal offenses require mens rea, we interpret statutes to incorporate that requirement “even where the statutory definition did not in terms include it.” Staples v. United States, 511 U. S. 600, 605-606 (1994) (quoting United States v. Balint, 258 U. S. 250, 251-252 (1922)).
Consider Tull v. United States, 481 U. S. 412 (1987). There, we considered whether a civil action under the
Our decision in Feltner v. Columbia Pictures Television, Inc., 523 U. S. 340 (1998) is similar. Faced with the question whether a copyright owner was entitled to a jury trial in a suit for damages, we observed that the statute was “silent on the point.” Id., at 342. The “entire statutory provision” made “no mention of a right to
Finally, in Monterey, we held that
This should have been an easier case than Tull, Feltner, or Monterey. In each of those cases, the statute invoked terms traditionally associated with the jury-trial right. See Monterey, 526 U. S., at 707 (“action[s] at law“); Feltner, 523 U. S., at 352-353 (“statutory damages“); Tull, 481 U. S., at 422 (“civil penalty“). Indeed, in all three cases, we ultimately held that the
C
The Court‘s approach to statutory interpretation is not only adventuresome—it also rests on an illusion. Neither history, nor logic, nor precedent supports its “intertwinement” rule.
I covered the lack of historical support for the rule in my discussion of the
As this example illustrates, the Court‘s rule makes little sense. There is no question that both Richards and Smith would be entitled to a jury trial on the merits of their
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The Court leads with Beacon Theatres, Inc. v. Westover, 359 U. S. 500 (1959). See ante, at 8-10. In that case, the District Court had two actions before it: (1) an equitable action by the plaintiff (Fox Theatres); and (2) a countersuit by the defendant (Beacon Theatres) for damages. See Id., at 502-503. Both actions involved a common issue related to the reasonableness of the plaintiff‘s underlying contracts. But only the latter action—a suit at law—implicated the right to a jury trial. That teed up the question: Which should the trial court resolve first?
The answer, we held, is that courts ultimately have “discretion in deciding whether the legal or equitable cause should be tried first.” Id., at 510. But this discretion should, “wherever possible, be exercised” such that the legal claims would be heard before the equitable ones. Ibid. Resolving the equitable claim first, we explained, might inadvertently “operate either by way of res judicata or collateral estoppel” so as to limit the “opportunity fully to try to a jury every issue which has a bearing upon” the legal claim. Id., at 504 (quoting Beacon Theatres, Inc. v. Westover, 252 F. 2d 864, 874 (CA9 1958)).
Beacon Theatres does not hold, however, that the
With that understanding of Beacon Theatres in mind, the differences with this case are hard to miss. Beacon Theatres involved a court‘s discretion in judicial administration—discretion that Congress is always free to override. See Katchen, 382 U. S., at 339-340 (emphasizing that the Beacon Theatres rule can be displaced “[t]o implement congressional intent“). The Court‘s analysis here, by contrast, turns on whether Congress affirmatively conferred a jury-trial right on prisoners when it enacted the
Besides, the problem that drove the Court‘s decision in Beacon Theatres is absent here. Recall the concern: that Fox‘s equitable claim would proceed to final judgment before Beacon Theatres‘s legal claim and thus preclusively resolve “the issues involved” in that claim. Katchen, 382 U. S., at 339-340. Indeed, as we later explained in Parklane Hosiery, “[r]ecognition that an equitable determination could have collateral-estoppel effect in a subsequent legal action was the major premise” of Beacon Theatres. 439 U. S., at 333 (emphasis added). The
No such concern is present in this case. Both courts to have considered the issue have concluded, consistent with principles of collateral estoppel, that the resolution of facts relating to administrative exhaustion does not bind the jury in a subsequent trial. See Pavey, 544 F. 3d, at 742; Albino, 747 F. 3d, at 1171. This makes sense: Because collateral estoppel requires a “final judgment,” it should have no force when the resolution of a threshold issue (like exhaustion) results in a without-prejudice dismissal. Restatement (Second) of Judgments §27 (1980).4
For reasons I do not understand, the Court recasts Beacon Theatres as having little to do with collateral estoppel. Without any hesitation, it turns Beacon Theatres‘s “major premise” into a minor corollary, announcing that the case will not be “artificially” limited “to cases involving estoppel.” Ante, at 14. But the reasoning of Beacon Theatres expressly turned on estoppel, and we have subsequently identified this principle as the animating force behind its holding. Parklane Hosiery, 439 U. S., at 333; Katchen, 382 U. S., at 339-340. And estoppel is the one circumstance where intertwinement with the merits has practical relevance to the jury-trial right. Without fanfare, citation, or explanation, the Court thus transforms our 40-year understanding of a seminal case on equity.
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The Court‘s reliance on Smithers v. Smith and Land v. Dollar is even more of a stretch: Neither has anything to do with the question presented here.
Start with Smithers, in which the plaintiff asserted that the defendants had stolen his land. 204 U. S. 632, 640 (1907). The land, the plaintiff claimed, was worth more than $2,000, the amount-in-controversy requirement then in effect. See Id., at 639-641. After holding a bench trial, the District Court dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction; according to the court, each defendant had taken a parcel worth less than $2,000, and the defendants had not acted
In other words, the District Court simply misapplied longstanding jurisdictional principles. The plaintiff‘s pleadings were sufficient to establish jurisdiction, notwithstanding any factual disputes that might limit the plaintiff‘s potential recovery down the line. But these disputes implicated the merits—damages, in particular—not jurisdiction. Smithers‘s rule is therefore unremarkable. A trial court may not prematurely resolve a merits question by framing it as a jurisdictional question, thereby depriving the plaintiff of a jury. Smithers says nothing about whether a threshold question requires a jury simply because of factual overlap with the merits.
Land v. Dollar, 330 U. S. 731 (1947), is even further afield. There, stockholders sued members of the U. S. Maritime Commission to recover stock previously delivered to the Commission. Id., at 733-734. The District Court dismissed the case, reasoning that because the stock was federal property, sovereign immunity barred the plaintiff‘s suit. Id., at 734-735. That was an error, we held: Ownership of the stock implicated the merits of the stockholders’ claim, so the court should not have decided that issue at the outset of the case. Id., at 739.
Nothing in Land turned on the
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The Court reads the