Opinion · Supreme Court of the United States
Perttu v. Richards
Perttu v. Richards, 605 U.S. 460 (2025)
- Type
- Opinion
- Court
- Supreme Court of the United States
- Jurisdiction
- Federal
- Date
- 2025-06-18
- Topic
- litigation
holding 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” | holding that “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... .” | holding that if a factual dispute on exhaustion is intertwined with a factual dispute that goes to the merits of the underlying substantive claim, then a jury trial is required on the intertwined issue(s) | holding that if a factual dispute on exhaustion is intertwined with a factual dispute that goes to the merits of the underlying substantive claim, then a jury trial is required on the intertwined issue(s) | holding that parties have a right to a jury trial to resolve genuine issues of fact on PLRA exhaustion when the issues are intertwined with the merits of a claim that falls under the Seventh Amendment | holding that parties have a right to a jury trial to resolve genuine issue of act on PLRA exhaustion when that issue is intertwined with the merits of a claim that falls under the Seventh Amendment | emphasizing that Prison Litigation Reform Act “requires proper exhaustion of available prison grievance procedures” (internal quotation marks omitted) | explaining that case involved intertwined First Amendment and exhaustion issues, “because both depend on whether [defendant prison employee] did in fact destroy [plaintiff inmate’s] grievances and retaliate against him” | holding “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” | collecting cases indicating the jury claims should be tried first when they involve “common factual issues” | requiring a jury trial if the fact 3 23-1506 “issue is intertwined with the merits of a claim protected by the Seventh Amendment” | “The parties agree that the exhaustion and First Amendment issues are intertwined, because both depend on whether Perttu did in fact destroy Richards’s grievance and retaliate against him.” | "[W]e hold that parties are entitled to a jury trial on PLRA exhaustion when that issue is intertwined with the merits of a claim protected by the Seventh Amendment." | “when the PLRA was enacted, many lower court decisions and treatises had extended the intertwinement principle to other threshold questions,” including personal jurisdiction, venue, choice of law, and forum non conveniens | “Before 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.” (citation modified) | "The right to trial by jury is of such importance and occupies so firm a place in our history and jurisprudence that any seeming curtailment of the right has always been and should be scrutinized with the utmost care." (cleaned up) | Exhaustion is a non-jurisdictional “standard affirmative defense”
Citator
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(Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2024 1
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
Syllabus
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 com-
plaints about prison conditions to exhaust available grievance proce-
dures before filing suit in federal court. 42 U. S. C. §1997e(a). But
“exhaustion is not required” when a prison administrator “threaten[s]
individual inmates so as to prevent their use of otherwise proper pro-
cedures.” Ross v. Blake, 578 U. S. 632
, 644. “Such interference with
an inmate’s pursuit of relief renders the administrative process una-
vailable,” so “§1997e(a) poses no bar” to suit. Ibid. The question pre-
sented is whether a party has a right to a jury trial on PLRA exhaus-
tion when that dispute is intertwined with the merits of the underlying
suit.
In this case, inmate Kyle Richards alleges that Thomas Perttu, a
prison employee, sexually harassed Richards and other inmates. Rich-
ards 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 42 U. S. C. §1983
for violating his constitutional rights, including his First
Amendment right to file grievances. Perttu moved for summary judg-
ment, arguing that the plaintiffs had failed to exhaust available griev-
ance procedures as required by the PLRA. The Magistrate Judge con-
cluded that there was “a genuine issue of fact as to whether Plaintiffs
were excused from properly exhausting their claims due to interfer-
ence by Perttu” and that the issue was “appropriate for resolution dur-
ing an evidentiary hearing.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 86a. At that hear-
ing, the Magistrate Judge concluded that Richards’s witnesses
regarding Perttu’s alleged destruction of grievance forms “lacked cred-
2 PERTTU v. RICHARDS
Syllabus
ibility.” The Magistrate Judge recommended dismissal without preju-
dice for failure to exhaust, and the District Court adopted that recom-
mendation. The Sixth Circuit reversed. It stated that there was “no
doubt that a judge may otherwise resolve factual disputes regarding
exhaustion under the PLRA,” but it held that “the Seventh Amend-
ment 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, 911
, 917, 923. That decision conflicted with Seventh Circuit precedent.
Held: Parties are entitled to a jury trial on PLRA exhaustion when that
issue is intertwined with the merits of a claim that requires a jury trial
under the Seventh Amendment. Pp. 5–16.
(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 construc-
tion 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. Bea- con Theatres, Inc. v. Westover,359 U. S. 500
, 510–511. That usual practice matters for interpreting the PLRA because “Congress is un- derstood to legislate against a background of common-law adjudica- tory 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 pur- pose 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 con-
texts 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
Cite as: 605 U. S. ____
(2025) 3
Syllabus
and juries resolve legal claims. In Beacon Theatres, this Court held
that judges may not resolve equitable claims first if doing so could pre-
vent 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 fac-
tual issues, and Beacon Theatres teaches that a trial court must pre-
serve 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 instruc-
tive. Ordinarily, judges may resolve factual disputes when determin-
ing 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 judicial authority to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction “obviously is not unlimited,” for that would risk summarily determining the merits “without the ordi- nary incidents of a trial, including the right to a jury.”Id., at 645
. In Land v. Dollar,330 U. S. 731
, the Court found that Land was “the type of case where the question of jurisdiction is dependent on decision of the merits” and thus held the District Court should have “proceed[ed] to a decision on the merits.”Id., at 735
, 738–739.
In its decision below, the Sixth Circuit relied on its precedent apply-
ing Land, reasoning that if “certain cases [must] be heard and deter-
mined on the merits even when constitutionally implicated jurisdic-
tional disputes” are at play, then “the result should be the same when
the lesser concern of an affirmative defense, such as the PLRA’s re-
quirement to exhaust administrative remedies, implicates the merits
of a claim.” 96 F. 4th, at 923. The Court finds this reasoning persua-
sive. After all, when the PLRA was enacted, many lower court deci-
sions 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 fed-
eral 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
4 PERTTU v. RICHARDS
Syllabus
Beacon Theatres is inapplicable, but his argument relies on the ques-
tionable assumption that judicial factual findings concerning exhaus-
tion 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 es-
topped, and it is usually impossible for prisoners to go back and ex-
haust 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.
ROBERTS, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which SO-
TOMAYOR, KAGAN, GORSUCH, and JACKSON, JJ., joined. BARRETT, J., filed
a dissenting opinion, in which THOMAS, ALITO, and KAVANAUGH, JJ.,
joined.
Cite as: 605 U. S. ____
(2025) 1
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) re-
quires prisoners with complaints about prison conditions to
exhaust available grievance procedures before bringing suit
in federal court. 42 U. S. C. §1997e(a). In some cases the
question whether a prisoner has exhausted those proce-
dures is intertwined with the merits of the prisoner’s law-
suit. Respondent Kyle Richards is a prisoner in Michigan.
He alleges that he was sexually abused by petitioner
Thomas Perttu, a prison employee. He also alleges that
when he tried to file grievance forms about the abuse,
Perttu destroyed them and threatened to kill him if he filed
more.
Richards sued Perttu for violating his constitutional
rights, including his First Amendment right to file griev-
ances. Perttu responded that Richards had failed to ex-
haust 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
2 PERTTU v. RICHARDS
Opinion of the Court
whether a party has a right to a jury trial on PLRA exhaus-
tion 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 en- acted the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995,94 Stat. 352
, 42 U. S. C. §1997e, which aims to “reduce the quantity and improve the quality of prisoner suits.” Porter v. Nussle,534 U. S. 516, 524
(2002). 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 con-
ditions 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 exhaus-
tion” 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 ex-
plained, “such interference with an inmate’s pursuit of re-
lief renders the administrative process unavailable,” so
Cite as: 605 U. S. ____
(2025) 3
Opinion of the Court
“§1997e(a) poses no bar” to suit. Ibid.
B
In 2020, Richards and two other prisoners filed this suit
against Perttu under 42 U. S. C. §1983
. The complaint al-
leged that, over the prior year, Perttu had “engaged in a
pattern of prolific and repetitive sexual abuse, against at
least a dozen inmates,” in violation of their constitutional
rights. App. 2–3. The complaint also alleged that the plain-
tiffs had “attempted to exhaust remedies to the best of
[their] ability” but had been “threatened and retaliated
against” for doing so. Id., at 2, 13. The complaint listed
specific incidents in which Perttu allegedly ripped up the
plaintiffs’ grievance forms, threw them away, and threat-
ened to kill the plaintiffs if they filed more. Id., at 13–18.
The plaintiffs also alleged they were being “wrongfully held
in administrative segregation in retaliation for filing griev-
ances” and that Perttu was retaliating against them in
other ways, all in violation of their First Amendment rights.
Id., at 18–27.
Perttu moved for summary judgment, arguing that the
plaintiffs had failed to exhaust available grievance proce-
dures as required by the PLRA. To support his motion,
Perttu submitted an affidavit from a prison grievance coor-
dinator 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 is-
sue 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,
4 PERTTU v. RICHARDS
Opinion of the Court
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 Mag-
istrate 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 per-
missible where it would essentially be resolving a claim it-
self.” Brief for Appellant in No. 22–1298, p. 1. After ap-
pointing 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 exhaus-
tion 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).
Cite as: 605 U. S. ____
(2025) 5
Opinion of the Court
II
“The right to trial by jury is ‘of such importance and oc-
cupies so firm a place in our history and jurisprudence that
any seeming curtailment of the right’ has always been and
‘should be scrutinized with the utmost care.’ ” SEC v.
Jarkesy, 603 U. S. 109, 121
(2024) (quoting Dimick v. Schiedt,293 U. S. 474, 486
(1935)). Richards makes two arguments for why his Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial has been violated here. First, he argues that the dis- pute over exhaustion in this case is intertwined with a claim that falls squarely under the Seventh Amendment— his First Amendment retaliation claim for damages under §1983—and that factual questions related to that claim must be resolved by a jury. See Monterey v. Del Monte Dunes at Monterey, Ltd.,526 U. S. 687, 709
, 720–721 (1999) (holding that “a §1983 suit seeking legal relief is an action at law within the meaning of the Seventh Amendment” and that a “predominantly factual question” in such an action is “for the jury”). Second, Richards makes a broader argu- ment that, based on the historical test in Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc.,517 U. S. 370
(1996), the Sev- enth Amendment requires a jury trial for all factual dis- putes related to PLRA exhaustion, even those not inter- twined with the merits. 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 pos- sible by which the [constitutional] question may be avoided.’ ” Del Monte Dunes,526 U. S., at 707
(quoting Felt- ner v. Columbia Pictures Television, Inc.,523 U. S. 340, 345
(1998)). Such a construction is possible here. PLRA ex- haustion 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
6 PERTTU v. RICHARDS
Opinion of the Court
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 “Con- gress is understood to legislate against a background of common-law adjudicatory principles . . . with an expecta- tion 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 inter- pretation 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 with- out 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 affirma- tive 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 question”).1 —————— 1 The dissent criticizes us for asking whether we can avoid the consti- tutional question by answering the statutory one. Post, at 6–8 (BARRETT, J., dissenting). But we have described doing exactly that as a “cardinal principle.” Tull v. United States,481 U. S. 412, 417, n. 3
(1987). The
dissent suggests the principle does not apply here because the parties
did not raise it and the courts below did not address it. But the same
was true in Tull, yet we still began by asking whether it was possible to
read the statute to avoid the constitutional question, and moved on only
after concluding the answer was no. Surely we should not deviate from
that principle simply because our answer this time is yes. And in this
case, the statutory question has been fully briefed by amici and involves
the same precedents relied on by the parties. See Brief for Law Profes-
sors as Amici Curiae 8–15.
Cite as: 605 U. S. ____
(2025) 7
Opinion of the Court
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 al- lowed] to dismiss plainly meritless claims without first ad- dressing” 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 “af- firmative defense” subject to “the usual practice under the Federal Rules.”Id., at 212
. And that usual practice ap- plies, 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 condi- tions . . . until such administrative remedies as are availa- ble are exhausted.” 42 U. S. C. §1997e(a). Perttu does not argue that this provision requires that exhaustion disputes be resolved by judges. And rightly so. As we noted in Jones, the phrase “[n]o action shall be brought” is “boilerplate lan- guage” often used for other affirmative defenses, like stat- utes of limitations,549 U. S., at 220
, that routinely go to the jury. And “failure to exhaust was notably not added” to the PLRA’s screening provisions, which require judges to dismiss cases on specified grounds.Id., at 214
. Just like in Jones, then, the statutory silence on the ques- tion 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
8 PERTTU v. RICHARDS
Opinion of the Court
the affirmative defense . . . as Congress may have contem-
plated 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
B
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 Amend-
ment, 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 Bea-
con Theatres, 359 U. S., at 510–511, we held that judges
may not resolve equitable claims first if doing so could pre-
vent legal claims from getting to the jury.
Beacon Theatres involved an antitrust dispute between
two movie theater companies. One company brought an eq-
uitable claim for a declaratory judgment that it had not vi-
olated antitrust laws. The other company brought a legal
——————
2 The dissent thinks this should be an even “easier case” than Tull and
others where we concluded that a statute did not confer a jury trial right.
Post, at 10. But our analysis in this case is that “the usual practice
should be followed,” Jones v. Bock, 549 U. S. 199, 212
(2007), and that the usual practice in cases of intertwinement is to send the question to the jury, see Beacon Theatres, Inc. v. Westover,359 U. S. 500
, 510–511
(1959); see also post, at 12 (recognizing that Beacon Theatres establishes
a “general prudential rule”). Tull and the other cases did not implicate
a practice or rule like Beacon Theatres that itself calls for a jury trial.
Cite as: 605 U. S. ____
(2025) 9
Opinion of the Court
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 nar-
rowly 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, circum-
stances which in view of the flexible procedures of the Fed-
eral 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 needed to be resolved by a jury first. 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 “com- mon” “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
10 PERTTU v. RICHARDS
Opinion of the Court
First Amendment questions depend on common factual is-
sues. And Beacon Theatres teaches that a trial court’s dis-
cretion 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 PLRA prevents
holding a jury trial here.
2
Our cases involving subject matter jurisdiction are also
instructive. Ordinarily, judges may resolve factual dis-
putes 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 sub- ject 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 plain- tiff 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 ar- riving at this conclusion, the district court had decided a factual question that was “an essential element of the mer- its of the dispute”—whether the defendants had acted jointly—and so had “in effect, decided the controversy be- tween 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 contro-
versy between the parties be summarily decided without
the ordinary incidents of a trial, including the right to a
Cite as: 605 U. S. ____
(2025) 11
Opinion of the Court
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, be- cause 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 ques- tions 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 ques- tions 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 juris- dictional issues” when there is “an identity between the ‘ju- risdictional’ 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. Spen- cer, Federal Practice and Procedure §1350, pp. 224–226 (4th ed. 2024). In its decision below, the Sixth Circuit relied on its Cir- cuit 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, impli- cates the merits of a claim.” 96 F. 4th, at 923 (citing Fire- man’s Fund Ins. Co. v. Railway Express Agency, Inc.,253 F. 2d 780, 784
(CA6 1958)). We find that reasoning persua-
sive. After all, when the PLRA was enacted, many lower
12 PERTTU v. RICHARDS
Opinion of the Court
court decisions and treatises had extended the intertwine-
ment principle to other threshold questions, including per-
sonal jurisdiction, venue, choice of law, and forum non con-
veniens. See, e.g., 5 J. Moore et al., Moore’s Federal
Practice ¶38.36[3], p. 38–341 (2d ed. 1996) (“[T]o determine
that the alleged acts did not take place . . . on motion to dis-
miss for want of proper venue would be to deny the plaintiff
a jury trial on the merits.”); see also 8 Moore §§38.34[1][e],
[2], [3] (3d ed. 2024). We express no view today on whether
lower courts have been correct to extend the intertwine-
ment principle to these other issues. We simply note 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 re-
solve factual disputes that are intertwined with the merits
at the merits stage. The PLRA’s complete silence on that
question is therefore “strong evidence” that this “usual
practice should be followed.” Jones, 549 U. S., at 212
.
C
Perttu offers important counterarguments, but we are ul-
timately not persuaded. First, Perttu argues that Beacon
Theatres is inapplicable here. According to Perttu, the con-
cern 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 fac-
tual findings related to exhaustion would have no such ef-
fect in a later jury trial.
Two Circuits have suggested they agree with Perttu that
factual findings related to exhaustion have no estoppel ef-
fect, 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
Cite as: 605 U. S. ____
(2025) 13
Opinion of the Court
claim. See Restatement (Second) of Judgments §27, Com-
ment b, Illustration 3, Comment d, pp. 251–255 (1980); 18
C. Wright, A. Miller, & E. Cooper, Federal Practice and Pro-
cedure §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 pre-
clusive 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 the jury trial, not to change
the estoppel rules. See Parklane Hosiery Co. v. Shore, 439 U. S. 322, 333
(1979) (“Recognition that an equitable deter- mination could have collateral-estoppel effect in a subse- quent legal action was the major premise of this Court’s de- cision in Beacon Theatres.”).4 —————— 3 See also, e.g., Carr v. Tillery,591 F. 3d 909, 917
(CA7 2010) (“[A] dis- missal can be without prejudice yet have preclusive effect.”); Deutsch v. Flannery,823 F. 2d 1361, 1364
(CA9 1987) (“It matters not that the prior
action resulted in a dismissal without prejudice, so long as the determi-
nation being accorded preclusive effect was essential to the dismissal.”).
4 The dissent reads this “major premise” language from Parklane as
suggesting that Beacon Theatres is all about estoppel. Post, at 13. But
the question in Parklane was whether a prior equitable ruling could have
estoppel effect in a subsequent legal action, and Parklane simply pointed
out that Beacon Theatres believed it could—i.e., that Beacon Theatres
took that fact as a “major premise” then reasoned from there. That logic
14 PERTTU v. RICHARDS
Opinion of the Court
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.” (em- phasis added)). The principle of Beacon Theatres still ap- plies when judicial resolution of a common issue might “pre- vent 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,” be- cause “[i]n such an instance, a jury would never be assem- bled 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 griev- ance 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
——————
does not imply that Beacon Theatres is limited to cases involving estop-
pel.
Cite as: 605 U. S. ____
(2025) 15
Opinion of the Court
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 does not argue that
courts should treat individual cases of intertwinement dif-
ferently based on whether a particular party in a given case
might one day get to a jury. See Beacon Theatres, 359 U. S., at 504
(concern at issue arises when prior determination by judge “might” deprive party of jury trial);id., at 505
(same). 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 —————— 5 Perttu argues that Richards remains able to exhaust because his al- legations fall under the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA),117 Stat. 972
,34 U. S. C. §30301
et seq., and federal regulations prevent pris- ons from imposing deadlines on PREA grievances regarding sexual abuse. Reply Brief 14 (citing28 CFR §115.52
(b)(1) (2024)). Accordingly, Perttu says, the PREA policy applicable in the State of Michigan when Richards filed suit did not bar him from filing new grievances. See App. 75 (“A prisoner may file a PREA grievance at any time.”). Richards, how- ever, says “[t]his is the first time in this five years of litigation that [Perttu] has represented that . . . all of [Richards’s] claims might be able to be exhausted.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 51. Richards also says that his “First Amendment claim . . . is not protected by the PREA policy.”Id.,
at 51–
52; see also App. 76 (“Any PREA grievance containing multiple issues,
which include sexual abuse and non-sexual abuse issues, shall be pro-
cessed . . . to address the allegations of sexual abuse only.”). We take no
position on this dispute.
Perttu also notes that the Michigan Department of Corrections has
since amended its PREA policy to “eliminat[e] the administrative griev-
ance procedure for addressing prisoner grievances regarding sexual
abuse.” Reply Brief 14, n. 3. We take no position on whether this new
policy covers Richards’s First Amendment claim or whether there are
other administrative remedies that Richards would need to exhaust be-
fore filing a subsequent action.
16 PERTTU v. RICHARDS
Opinion of the Court
claims from going to trial. For support, Perttu cites our de-
cision in Katchen v. Landy, 382 U. S. 323
(1966). There we held that a bankruptcy court could proceed to decide an eq- uitable claim—even if similar issues might one day arise before a jury on a legal claim—because to prevent the equi- table 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 interven- tion of a jury” in a special set of courts created for that pur- pose.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 can-
not 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 judi-
cial resources shows that Congress clearly intended for
judges to resolve exhaustion disputes in this unique circum-
stance.
* * *
If Congress had expressly provided in the PLRA that ex-
haustion disputes must be resolved by judges, then we
Cite as: 605 U. S. ____
(2025) 17
Opinion of the Court
would have been required to consider today whether such a
provision violates the Seventh Amendment. But it is a “car-
dinal principle” that we not address such a constitutional
question unless necessary. Tull v. United States, 481 U. S. 412, 417, n. 3
(1987). Meanwhile, as we have shown, the
usual practice of the federal courts in cases of intertwine-
ment is to send common issues to the jury. Because nothing
in the PLRA suggests Congress intended to depart from
that practice here, we hold that parties are entitled to a jury
trial on PLRA exhaustion when that issue is intertwined
with the merits of a claim protected by the Seventh Amend-
ment.
The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for
the Sixth Circuit is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
Cite as: 605 U. S. ____
(2025) 1
BARRETT, J., dissenting
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]
JUSTICE BARRETT, with whom JUSTICE THOMAS, JUSTICE
ALITO, and JUSTICE KAVANAUGH join, dissenting.
The Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PLRA) re-
quires prisoners suing under 42 U. S. C. §1983
to first ex-
haust the administrative remedies that are “available” to
them. §1997e(a). In the decision below, the Sixth Circuit
held that even if prisoners are not ordinarily entitled to a
jury trial to resolve this threshold question, the Seventh
Amendment requires a jury when exhaustion is intertwined
with the merits. I would reverse. The jury right conferred
by the Seventh Amendment does not depend on the degree
of factual overlap between a threshold issue and the merits
of the plaintiff ’s claim.
The Court takes a different path. Instead of resolving the
constitutional question that the parties brought to us, the
Court holds that the PLRA itself requires a jury trial when-
ever an issue is common to exhaustion and the merits. No
matter, the Court says, that the PLRA is silent on the sub-
ject. No matter that this statutory argument was not
briefed before us. And no matter that it was not passed on
by the courts below.
Having taken this detour, the Court ends up in the wrong
place. Reading the PLRA’s silence to implicitly confer a
right to a jury trial contravenes not only basic principles of
statutory interpretation, but also several of this Court’s
2 PERTTU v. RICHARDS
BARRETT, J., dissenting
precedents. I respectfully dissent.
I
Kyle Richards, a state prisoner, sued Thomas Perttu, a
prison employee, for damages under §1983. Richards al-
leged two bases for relief: First, he alleged that Perttu had
sexually harassed several inmates, including Richards.
And second, Richards alleged that when he had attempted
to file grievances reporting the harassment, Perttu had re-
taliated in several ways, including by destroying Richards’s
grievance forms. See ante, at 3–4. Richards claimed that
Perttu’s initial harassment and subsequent retaliation vio-
lated the Eighth and First Amendments, respectively. See
App. 18.
Because a damages suit under §1983 is a “Sui[t] at com-
mon law,” all agree that the Seventh Amendment entitles
Richards to a jury trial on the merits of his claims. U. S.
Const., Amdt. 7 (“In Suits at common law, where the value
in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial
by jury shall be preserved”); see Monterey v. Del Monte
Dunes at Monterey, Ltd., 526 U. S. 687
, 720–721 (1999). To litigate the merits, however, the PLRA requires Richards to establish that he exhausted “such administrative remedies as are available” to him. §1997e(a). Whether Richards did so turns on a factual dispute about the availability of his administrative remedies. According to Richards, Perttu’s destruction of Richards’s grievances rendered the prison grievance system “unavailable” for purposes of the PLRA. Ross v. Blake,578 U. S. 632
, 644 (2016). Perttu, for his
part, insists that he did not destroy Richards’s grievances;
thus, he says, the system was available to Richards and
Richards’s failure to file grievances dooms his §1983 claims.
See §1997e(a).
This dispute about the facts engendered another about
the law—and more specifically, about the role of the jury.
The PLRA itself says nothing about the right to a jury trial
Cite as: 605 U. S. ____
(2025) 3
BARRETT, J., dissenting
on the question of exhaustion. And all the circuits to have
considered the question hold that the Seventh Amendment
does not require one. So the consensus rule in the courts of
appeals has been that PLRA exhaustion can be resolved
through a bench trial.1
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 ex- haustion issue . . . would also resolve a genuine dispute of material fact regarding the merits of the plaintiff ’s sub- stantive case.”96 F. 4th 911
, 923 (2024). In such cases, the Sixth Circuit held, the Seventh Amendment entitles the parties to a jury. That holding broke with the decisions of the Seventh and Ninth Circuits, both of which have rejected a factual-overlap exception. See Pavey v. Conley,544 F. 3d 739, 742
(CA7 2008); Albino v. Baca,747 F. 3d 1162, 1171
(CA9 2014) (en banc) (agreeing with Pavey in dicta).
II
Having granted certiorari to resolve this split, I would re-
verse. The jury-trial right conferred by the Seventh
Amendment does not turn on the degree of factual overlap
between a threshold question and the merits of the plain-
tiff ’s claim.
Because the Seventh Amendment provides that the
“ ‘right of trial by jury shall be preserved,’ ” it protects “ ‘the
right which existed under the English common law when
the Amendment was adopted.’ ” Markman v. Westview In-
struments, Inc., 517 U. S. 370, 376
(1996). In actions that —————— 1 See Messa v. Goord,652 F. 3d 305
, 308–310 (CA2 2011) (per curiam); Small v. Camden Cty.,728 F. 3d 265
, 269–271 (CA3 2013); Dillon v. Rog- ers,596 F. 3d 260, 271
(CA5 2010); Lee v. Willey,789 F. 3d 673
, 677–678 (CA6 2015); Pavey v. Conley,544 F. 3d 739
, 741–742 (CA7 2008); Albino v. Baca,747 F. 3d 1162
, 1170–1171 (CA9 2014) (en banc); Bryant v. Rich,530 F. 3d 1368
, 1373–1377 (CA11 2008).
4 PERTTU v. RICHARDS
BARRETT, J., dissenting
would have been tried at law at the founding, such as this
one, the question is whether the “particular trial decision”
at issue “must fall to the jury in order to preserve the sub-
stance of the common-law right as it existed in 1791.” Ibid.
The parties devote much of their time to debating the best founding-era analogue to the exhaustion defense. Accord- ing to Richards, exhaustion is analogous to common-law de- fenses 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, Hand- book of Common-Law Pleading §15, p. 32 (3d ed. 1923). Perttu, on the other hand, grounds exhaustion in tradi- tional equitable practice. In his view, an exhaustion de- fense 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 Seventh Amendment requires jury trials for all disputes about exhaustion. There is no circuit split on that question, and the court below did not address it. (Recall that under binding Sixth Circuit precedent, there is generally no Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial for exhaustion disputes. See Lee,789 F. 3d, at 678
.) The ques-
tion, moreover, might be very difficult. Neither party iden-
tifies an obvious analogue to exhaustion, a defense that de-
veloped long after the founding. See R. Berger, Exhaustion
of Administrative Remedies, 48 Yale L. J. 981, and n. 1
——————
2 Richards relies primarily on the plea in discharge, a type of plea in
bar that applies when the plaintiff ’s cause of action has been “discharged
by some matter subsequent, either of fact or of law.” B. Shipman, Hand-
book of Common-Law Pleading §198b, p. 348 (3d ed. 1923).
Cite as: 605 U. S. ____
(2025) 5
BARRETT, J., dissenting
(1939). Resolving the dispute would therefore require us to
confront challenging historical and methodological ques-
tions: Did the Seventh Amendment constitutionalize
common-law pleading rules? Does Congress have the au-
thority, after the merger of law and equity, to fashion novel
defenses as “equitable”? What presumption applies when
the historical evidence is ambiguous? It would be unwise
to address these questions before the lower courts have se-
riously considered them.
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 Seventh Amendment
rule applies when a factual dispute about exhaustion is in-
tertwined with the merits. And on this question, the his-
torical record is much clearer. Richards has presented no
evidence that intertwinement with the merits was relevant
to the jury-trial right. Instead, he simply repeats his
broader historical argument: that factual disputes raised
through pleas were heard by juries. But this was true re-
gardless of whether the dispute overlapped with the merits.
See, e.g., Wetmore v. Rymer, 169 U. S. 115
, 120–123 (1898)
(describing “trial[s] had with a jury” over subject-matter ju-
risdiction). Likewise, Perttu’s account does not implicate
intertwinement. All equitable defenses were heard by “the
judge as a chancellor” because they were freestanding equi-
table actions. Liberty Oil, 260 U. S., at 242–243; see W.
Cook, Equitable Defenses, 32 Yale L. J. 645, 650–652
(1922–1923).
The upshot is that there is no historical support for a spe-
cial intertwinement rule. Mere factual overlap with the
merits does not transform a collateral issue ordinarily re-
solved 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.
6 PERTTU v. RICHARDS
BARRETT, J., dissenting
III
Remarkably, in this Seventh Amendment case, the Court
has nothing to say about the Seventh Amendment. In fact,
the Court sets the Constitution entirely aside, “express[ing]
no view” on how or when it demands that a jury resolve in-
tertwined factual disputes. Ante, at 6. Left with nothing
else to interpret, the Court pivots to the PLRA. True, the
Court acknowledges, the PLRA says nothing about the role
of the jury—and certainly nothing about the role of the jury
in resolving disputes about exhaustion. But as a matter of
statutory interpretation and “ ‘common-law adjudicatory
principles,’ ” the Court holds that the PLRA nonetheless re-
quires a jury trial when a dispute about exhaustion is “in-
tertwined with the merits” of the plaintiff ’s claim. Ante, at
5–6.
This is wrong several times over. Richards did not pre-
sent this statutory theory to us or any other court; the
PLRA does not confer a jury right through its silence; and
the Court plucks its purported “common-law adjudicatory
principle” out of thin air. I take each point in turn.
A
To begin, the Court spins a statutory theory that Rich-
ards has never even mentioned, much less developed.3 Be-
fore 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 Seventh Amendment.
——————
3 The avoidance canon permits a court to choose a less plausible inter-
pretation of a statute when the most natural one would provoke a “ ‘seri-
ous’ ” constitutional question. Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U. S. 678, 689
(2001). Though the Court invokes the canon in this case, it is unwilling
to say that interpreting the PLRA to permit a court to resolve Richards’s
exhaustion defense would pose a “serious” constitutional question. This
reticence is presumably attributable to the scant historical support for
Richards’s proposed intertwinement rule. Even if the canon applied,
moreover, the chosen interpretation must be plausible—and, as I explain
in the next Part, the Court’s interpretation most certainly is not.
Cite as: 605 U. S. ____
(2025) 7
BARRETT, J., dissenting
See Brief for Respondent 3 (“[T]he Seventh Amendment
clearly protects Respondent’s right to jury resolution of dis-
puted historical facts central to the merits of his legal
claim”); Brief in Opposition 1 (“The Sixth Circuit correctly
held that [the District Court’s] process violated the Seventh
Amendment”). The same was true below. In the District
Court, Richards’s argument turned on the proper applica-
tion of circuit precedent—precedent that has everything to
do with the Seventh Amendment and nothing to do with the
PLRA. See Objections and Request for Review in No. 2:20–
cv–00076 (WD Mich., Aug. 6, 2021), ECF Doc. 102, p. 2; Lee,
789 F. 3d, at 678
. Following Richards’s lead, the District Court likewise focused on the Seventh Amendment.2021 WL 3508384
, *2 (WD Mich., Aug. 10, 2021) (“[T]he Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial [does] not extend to the ex- haustion question”). On appeal in the Sixth Circuit, Rich- ards continued to press the same Seventh Amendment ar- gument. Brief for Appellant in No. 22–1298, p. 2; see generally Supplemental Brief for Appellant in No. 22–1289. So, no surprise, the Sixth Circuit addressed only the Sev- enth Amendment. See 96 F. 4th, at 923 (“[T]he Seventh Amendment requires a jury trial when the resolution of the exhaustion issue under the PLRA would also resolve a gen- uine dispute of material fact regarding the merits of the plaintiff ’s substantive case”). In light of this procedural history, the Court’s path is per- plexing. 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
8 PERTTU v. RICHARDS
BARRETT, J., dissenting
v. Wilkinson, 544 U. S. 709, 718, n. 7
(2005). (Making mat-
ters 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 dismis-
sal for an alleged failure to exhaust.
B
Nor does the Court depart from party presentation in ser-
vice 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 PLRA is “ ‘silent on the issue’
whether judges or juries should resolve factual disputes re-
lated to exhaustion.” Ante, at 7. Indeed, a search of the
exhaustion provision yields nothing remotely related to a
jury trial:
“No action shall be brought with respect to prison con-
ditions 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 PLRA
guarantees the plaintiff “a right to a jury trial on PLRA ex-
haustion when that issue is intertwined with the merits of
a claim that falls under the Seventh Amendment.” Ante, at
6. According to the Court, this “intertwinement” rule is so
well established that Congress expected courts to apply it
even when the statute says nothing about it. Ibid. Suppos-
edly, the rule is a “ ‘common-law adjudicatory principl[e]’ ”
against which Congress legislates. Ibid.
It is true that Congress sometimes legislates against the
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(2025) 9
BARRETT, J., dissenting
backdrop of a well-established principle. For example, re-
lying on the “strength of the traditional rule” that criminal
offenses require mens rea, we interpret statutes to incorpo-
rate 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)). Section 1997e(a), however, implicates no such “traditional rule.” (Note that while the Court treats the “intertwinement” rule as bedrock, it is ap- parently not confident enough in the rule’s historical roots to call it constitutionally required.) Even beyond that, how- ever, the Court does not cite precedent applying this sup- posed rule—or anything like it—as a background principle of statutory interpretation. And so far as I can tell, there is no such precedent. On the contrary, when we have consid- ered whether a statute confers the right to a jury trial, we have understood silence to mean what you would expect— that Congress did not affirmatively confer such a right. Consider Tull v. United States,481 U. S. 412
(1987). There, we considered whether a civil action under the Clean Water Act required the jury’s involvement. We asked the same question that the Court asks today: Was a “ ‘construc- tion of the statute . . . fairly possible by which the [Seventh Amendment] question may be avoided’ ”?Id., at 417, n. 3
. No, we said: “Nothing in the language of the Clean Water Act or its legislative history implies any congressional in- tent to grant defendants the right to a jury trial.”Ibid.
“Given this statutory silence,” there was no statutory basis for a jury-trial right.Ibid.
(emphasis added). That was so even though the traditional role of the jury in this context meant that the Seventh Amendment required one.Id.,
at 418–419. Our decision in Feltner v. Columbia Pictures Television, Inc., is similar.523 U. S. 340
(1998). Faced with the ques-
tion whether a copyright owner was entitled to a jury trial
10 PERTTU v. RICHARDS
BARRETT, J., dissenting
in a suit for damages, we observed that the statute was “si-
lent on the point.” Id., at 342
. The “entire statutory provi- sion” made “no mention of a right to a jury trial or, for that matter, to juries at all.”Id., at 346
. As in Tull, that silence was dispositive: We “discern[ed] no statutory right to a jury trial.”523 U. S., at 347
. And again, that was so even though the Seventh Amendment demanded a jury.Id.,
at 348–355. Finally, in Monterey, we held that §1983 “does not itself confer the jury right.”526 U. S., at 707
. This was true, we explained, even though §1983 authorizes a party to proceed through an “ ‘action at law.’ ” Ibid. We declined to interpret the phrase as a “term of art implying a right to a jury trial,” and, as a result, we declined “to find a statutory jury right under §1983.” Id., at 707–708. 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 Seventh Amendment required a jury trial. Monterey, 526 U. S., at 720–721; Feltner,523 U. S., at 355
; Tull,481 U. S., at 427
. It would have been easy to read into a phrase such as “action at law” an implicit instruction to require jury trials, but we did not do so; in- stead, we read the statute to mean what it actually said. Monterey,526 U. S., at 708
. Here, the statute contains no
term traditionally associated with the jury-trial right, and
the claim to a statutory backdrop is even weaker. That is
perhaps why Richards never attempted to make the statu-
tory argument that the Court advances now.
C
The Court’s approach to statutory interpretation is not
only adventuresome—it also rests on an illusion. Neither
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(2025) 11
BARRETT, J., dissenting
history, nor logic, nor precedent supports its “intertwine-
ment” rule.
I covered the lack of historical support for the rule in my
discussion of the Seventh Amendment. On, then, to logic:
The Court’s proposed rule is both manifestly unfair and in-
herently arbitrary. Under the Court’s approach, similarly
situated plaintiffs are entitled to a jury (or not) based on
immaterial distinctions in the claims they choose to bring.
To see why, imagine that another inmate (say, Smith) sues
Perttu based on the very same facts that Richards alleges
here. Like Richards, Smith claims that Perttu sexually
harassed him. And, like Richards, Smith contends that
Perttu destroyed his grievances, thus excusing his failure
to exhaust his available administrative remedies. But sup-
pose that, unlike Richards, Smith brings only an Eighth
Amendment claim. Because the destruction of grievance
forms does not implicate the Eighth Amendment, Rich-
ards’s proposed rule would not entitle Smith to a jury trial
on exhaustion.
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 §1983
claims. For both Richards and Smith, an adverse ruling on
administrative exhaustion would require dismissal. For
both Richards and Smith, the exhaustion question would
depend on the same set of facts and credibility determina-
tions. And for both Richards and Smith, an exhaustion-
related dismissal would not preclude a subsequent suit once
they have adequately exhausted their claims. So why
should Richards get a jury trial, but not Smith? The Court
does not say.
Instead, the Court relies on three cases holding (it says)
that an issue triggers the jury-trial right if it is intertwined
with the merits, even if it could ordinarily be resolved by
the court. None of the cited cases stands for this proposi-
tion.
12 PERTTU v. RICHARDS
BARRETT, J., dissenting
1
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 ac- tion by the plaintiff (Fox Theatres); and (2) a countersuit by the defendant (Beacon Theatres) for damages. See 359 U. S., 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—impli- cated 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 “dis- cretion 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.
Re- solving the equitable claim first, we explained, might inad- vertently “ ‘operate either by way of res judicata or collat- eral 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 Seventh Amendment compels legal-then-equitable sequencing. Nor does it “construc[t]” statutory silence to require such a rule. Ante, at 5. Instead, as our later cases confirm, Beacon The- atres “enunciate[s] no more than a general prudential rule” governing the trial court’s “discretion in determining the se- quence of trial” when legal and equitable claims are joined in the same action. Parklane Hosiery Co. v. Shore,439 U. S. 322, 334
(1979). As a rule of discretion, it is not hard and fast: We have observed that “there might be situations” in which a court may “resolve the equitable claim first even though the results might be dispositive of the issues in- volved in the legal claim.” Katchen v. Landy,382 U. S. 323
,
339–340 (1966). Congress, too, has flexibility: It may devise
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(2025) 13
BARRETT, J., dissenting
“a specific statutory scheme” that contemplates “the prompt
trial of a disputed claim without the intervention of a jury.”
Id., at 339.
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 Bea-
con Theatres rule can be displaced “[t]o implement congres-
sional intent”). The Court’s analysis here, by contrast,
turns on whether Congress affirmatively conferred a jury-
trial right on prisoners when it enacted the PLRA.
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 be-
fore Beacon Theatres’s legal claim and thus preclusively re-
solve “the issues involved” in that claim. Katchen, 382
U. S., at 339–340. Indeed, as we later explained in Park-
lane 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 holding of Beacon The- atres, we underscored, was specifically intended to avoid foreclosing, “by res judicata or collateral estoppel,” the “re- litigation” of an “issue common to both legal and equitable claims.”439 U. S., at 334
. 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)
14 PERTTU v. RICHARDS
BARRETT, J., dissenting
results in a without-prejudice dismissal. Restatement (Sec-
ond) of Judgments §27 (1980).4
For reasons I do not understand, the Court recasts Bea-
con 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 estop-
pel.” Ante, at 14. But the reasoning of Beacon Theatres ex-
pressly turned on estoppel, and we have subsequently iden-
tified 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 rele- vance to the jury-trial right. Without fanfare, citation, or —————— 4 While Richards does not dispute that collateral estoppel is inapplica- ble here, the Court suggests that it may apply. To support this conten- tion, however, the Court simply relies on the hornbook principle that “factual determinations in a first action can have direct estoppel effect in a second action on the same claim.” Ante, at 12–13. To be sure, the res- olution of a threshold issue precludes relitigation of that same threshold issue in a subsequent suit. See 18A C. Wright, A. Miller, & E. Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure §4436, p. 143 (3d ed. 2017). For that reason, if a court rules against a plaintiff on exhaustion and dismisses her case, she cannot relitigate whether she exhausted her administrative remedies. But if she prevails on exhaustion and proceeds to the merits, collateral estoppel should not preclude revisiting the facts that informed the court’s ruling on exhaustion. Indeed, the cases cited by the majority, see ante, at 13, n. 3, are consistent with this principle. See Carr v. Till- ery,591 F. 3d 909
, 916–917 (CA7 2010) (a determination that a federal court lacks subject-matter jurisdiction over a suit would bar a federal court from asserting jurisdiction in a subsequent suit); Deutsch v. Flan- nery,823 F. 2d 1361
, 1364 (CA9 1987) (a determination that a complaint
fails to allege fraud with particularity could preclude the refiling of an
identical complaint). The law-of-the-case doctrine would be similarly in-
applicable. See 18B C. Wright, A. Miller, & E. Cooper, Federal Practice
& Procedure §4478.5, p. 774 (3d ed. 2019) (“Reconsideration of a fact is-
sue may be appropriate . . . if a change of procedural posture changes the
nature of the issue”).
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(2025) 15
BARRETT, J., dissenting
explanation, the Court thus transforms our 40-year under-
standing of a seminal case on equity.
2
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. Seeid.,
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 jointly.Id.,
at 641–642. In so holding, the court violated the black-letter rule that a plaintiff ’s declaration generally establishes the amount in controversy.Id., at 642
. Because it was “legally possible for the plaintiff to recover the full amount of all the land and the full amount of the damages claimed,” we held that the District Court had erred in dis- missing the case.Id., at 644
. In other words, the District Court simply misapplied longstanding jurisdictional principles. The plaintiff ’s pleadings were sufficient to establish jurisdiction, notwith- standing any factual disputes that might limit the plain- tiff ’s potential recovery down the line. But these disputes implicated the merits—damages, in particular—not juris- diction. 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 fac- tual overlap with the merits. Land v. Dollar,330 U. S. 731
(1947), is even further
16 PERTTU v. RICHARDS
BARRETT, J., dissenting
afield. There, stockholders sued members of the U. S. Mar-
itime Commission to recover stock previously delivered to
the Commission. Id.,
at 733–734. The District Court dis- missed the case, reasoning that because the stock was fed- eral property, sovereign immunity barred the plaintiff ’s suit.Id.,
at 734–735. That was an error, we held: Owner- ship 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 Seventh Amendment; in- deed, the word “jury” does not appear in our opinion or the opinion of the court below. See Dollar v. Land,154 F. 2d 307
(CADC 1946). This may be because Land was a suit for injunctive relief and mandamus, not damages. See330 U. S., at 740
(Reed, J., concurring); Dollar,154 F. 2d, at 308
(“The complaint prayed for relief by way of injunction and mandamus against the defendant”). In fact, in the end “a lengthy trial was had before the court without a jury.” Dol- lar v. Land,184 F. 2d 245, 247
(CADC 1950). Sensibly, then, we have never understood Land to inform the scope of the right to a jury trial. It stands for the more limited proposition that when there is “an identity between the ‘ju- risdictional’ issues and certain issues on the merits,” there is “no objection to reserving the jurisdictional issues until a hearing on the merits.” Gulf Oil Corp. v. Copp Paving Co.,419 U. S. 186, 203, n. 19
(1974). This rule is just a principle
of judicial administration—addressing circumstances in
which it makes sense to defer ruling on a potentially juris-
dictional issue until the merits—and not a holding on the
jury-trial right.
* * *
The Court reads the PLRA to say what it does not. It does
so for reasons that the parties did not brief; that have no
basis in our doctrine; and that are contrary to well-established
principles of statutory interpretation. In so doing, the
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(2025) 17
BARRETT, J., dissenting
Court creates a regime under which an exhaustion require-
ment designed to “reduce the quantity and improve the
quality of prisoner suits” just generates more litigation of
its own. Porter v. Nussle, 534 U. S. 516, 524
(2002). Now, any prisoner can potentially obtain full jury review of the very threshold question that was designed to streamline prisoner litigation. All he has to do is find a way to trans- form his inability to use the prison system into a claim for relief. Congress did not devise such a rule, and we have never adopted one. I respectfully dissent.