Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-105_5536.pdf
Page Number: 22.0

Cite as:  599 U. S. ____ (2023) 

9 

JACKSON, J., dissenting 

compel  arbitration.  Griggs  merely  prevents  the  district
court from modifying that order—i.e., Griggs prevents the
district judge from revisiting whether to compel arbitration 
while the appeal is pending.  Griggs does not stop the dis-
trict court from proceeding on matters other than arbitra-
bility.

The  majority  opinion,  however,  transmogrifies  Griggs
into a sweeping stay of “pre-trial and trial proceedings” on 
not just arbitrability, but also the merits.  Ante, at 1.  Ac-
cording  to  the  majority,  if  the  question  on  appeal  is
“whether  the  litigation  may  go  forward  in  the  district 
court,” then the district court loses control over “the entire 
case.”  Ante,  at  3–4  (emphasis  added;  internal  quotation 
marks omitted).   

That rule far surpasses the statement in Griggs—the sole 
statement  on  which  the  majority  relies—that  a  district 
court loses “control over those aspects of the case involved
in the appeal.”  459 U. S., at 58; ante, at 3.  Only the arbi-
trability order is on appeal, not the merits.  And those mat-
ters are distinct.  As this Court recognized (before Congress 
enacted  §16),  “arbitrability”  is  “easily  severable  from  the
merits of the underlying disputes.”  Moses H. Cone Memo-
rial  Hospital  v.  Mercury  Constr.  Corp.,  460  U. S.  1,  21 
(1983).

The  majority  cannot  justify  why  it  treats  these  “easily 
severable”  matters  as  intertwined  in  an  arbitrability  ap-
peal.  “[T]he  question  on  appeal,”  as  the  majority  opinion
correctly identifies, is “whether the case belongs in arbitra-
tion.”  Ante, at 3.  But the questions remaining before the 
district court are different: whether the claims have merit, 
whether the parties are entitled to the discovery they seek, 
and so on.  Proceedings on those questions would not inter-
fere with the appellate court’s review of the arbitrability or-
der.  Those proceedings, in other words, do not implicate the 
Griggs  principle,  which  addresses  the  “danger  a  district