Perttu v. Richards

(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 (citing 28 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

Cite as: 605 U. S. ____ (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

Cite as: 605 U. S. ____ (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

Cite as: 605 U. S. ____ (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”).

Cite as: 605 U. S. ____ (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. 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

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. See 330

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

Cite as: 605 U. S. ____ (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.