Cite as: 530 U. S. 327 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
the § 3626(e)(2) stay, and "Congress therefore permitted the district court to do so, subject to appellate review." Ruiz v. Johnson, supra, at 394.
The critical flaw in this construction, however, is that § 3626(e)(4) only provides for an appeal from an order preventing the operation of the automatic stay. § 3626(e)(4) ("Any order staying, suspending, delaying, or barring the operation of the automatic stay" under § 3626(e)(2) "shall be appealable"). If the rationale for the provision were that in some situations equity demands that the automatic stay be suspended, then presumably the denial of a motion to enjoin the stay should also be appealable. The one-way nature of the appeal provision only makes sense if the automatic stay is required to operate during a specific time period, such that any attempt by a district court to circumvent the mandatory stay is immediately reviewable.
The Government contends that if Congress' goal were to prevent courts from circumventing the PLRA's plain commands, mandamus would have been a more appropriate remedy than appellate review. But that proposition is doubtful, as mandamus is an extraordinary remedy that is "granted only in the exercise of sound discretion." Whitehouse v. Illinois Central R. Co., 349 U. S. 366, 373 (1955). Given that curbing the equitable discretion of district courts was one of the PLRA's principal objectives, it would have been odd for Congress to have left enforcement of § 3626(e)(2) to that very same discretion. Instead, Congress sensibly chose to make available an immediate appeal to resolve situations in which courts mistakenly believe—under the novel scheme created by the PLRA—that they have the authority to enjoin the automatic stay, rather than the extraordinary remedy of mandamus, which requires a showing of a "clear and indisputable" right to the issuance of the writ. See Mallard v. United States Dist. Court for Southern Dist. of Iowa, 490 U. S. 296, 309 (1989). In any event, § 3626(e) as originally enacted did not provide for interlocutory review. It was
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