Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-105_5536.pdf
Page Number: 21.0

8 

COINBASE, INC. v. BIELSKI 

JACKSON, J., dissenting 

III 
Because  neither  the  statute  nor  any  background  law
states that an interlocutory appeal over arbitrability trig-
gers  a  mandatory  general  stay  of  trial  court  proceedings,
the majority opinion resorts to spinning such a rule from a
single sentence in Griggs v. Provident Consumer Discount 
Co., 459 U. S. 56 (1982) (per curiam).  But Griggs expresses
a far narrower principle, and is thus insufficient to support
the majority’s mandatory-general-stay rule. 

Griggs  stands  for  a  modest  proposition:  Two  courts
should avoid exercising control over the same order or judg-
ment simultaneously.  The problem Griggs identifies is the 
“danger a district court and a court of appeals would be sim-
ultaneously analyzing the same judgment.”  Id., at 59.  The 
cure Griggs prescribes is that “[t]he filing of a notice of ap-
peal  . . . divests  the  district  court  of  its  control  over  those 
aspects of the case involved in the appeal.”  Id., at 58. 

And the reason is simple.  Two courts simultaneously an-
alyzing the same judgment could step on each other’s toes. 
It  would  interfere  with  the  appellate  court’s  review  of  an 
order if the district court modified that order mid-appeal. 
Instead, an order should be reviewed by one court at a time.
This notion of “one order, one reviewing court” is all that
was at issue in Griggs.  Griggs concerned a party that tried
to appeal a judgment while the District Court was still con-
sidering whether to alter that same judgment.  Id., at 56. 
The Court held that the appeal needed to wait until after 
the District Court’s work on that judgment was done.  Id., 
at  60–61.  This  result,  which  followed  from  the  Federal 
Rules of Appellate Procedure, was necessary to “avoi[d]” the 
situation  “in  which  district  courts  and  courts  of  appeals
would  both  have  had  the  power  to  modify  the  same  judg-
ment.”  Id., at 60 (emphasis added).

Properly understood and applied here, Griggs divests the 
district court of control over only a narrow slice of the case.  
The  interlocutory  appeal  addresses  an  order  declining  to