Page:Coinbase, Inc. v. Bielski.pdf/26

Rh appeal succeeds, the pro-arbitration party gets its wish and the dispute goes to arbitration.

Perhaps for those reasons, real-life parties do not agree with the majority that an interlocutory arbitrability appeal is pointless without an automatic stay. No stay was issued in this case, for example, yet Coinbase still pursued its interlocutory appeal. Nor did other parties stop bringing interlocutory arbitrability appeals in the Circuits that had interpreted §16 to impose no automatic stay.

Yet this Court steps in to give the pro-arbitration party the additional right to an automatic stay that Congress withheld. Now, any defendant that devises a non-frivolous argument for arbitration can not only appeal, but also press pause on the case—leaving plaintiffs to suffer harm, lose evidence, and bleed dry their patience and funding in the meantime. To confer that power on a class of litigants, based on blanket judgments resolving competing policy concerns, is Congress’s domain, not ours. And where Congress is silent, the job of managing particular litigation, in light of the concrete circumstances presented, belongs to the judge closest to a case.