NELSON v. CAMPBELL, COMMISSIONER, ALABAMA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, et al.

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637 OCTOBER TERM, 2003
Syllabus
NELSON v. CAMPBELL, COMMISSIONER, ALABAMA
DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, et al.
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for
the eleventh circuit
No. 03–6821. Argued March 29, 2004—Decided May 24, 2004
Three days before his scheduled execution by lethal injection, petitioner
filed a 42 U. S. C. § 1983 action against respondent Alabama prison offi-
cials, alleging that the use of a “cut-down” procedure requiring an inci-
sion into his arm or leg to access his severely compromised veins consti-
tuted cruel and unusual punishment and deliberate indifference to his
medical needs in violation of the Eighth Amendment. Petitioner, who
had already filed an unsuccessful federal habeas application, sought a
permanent injunction against the cut-down’s use, a temporary stay of
execution so the District Court could consider his claim’s merits, and
orders requiring respondents to furnish a copy of the protocol on the
medical procedures for venous access and directing them to promulgate
a venous access protocol that comports with contemporary standards.
Respondents moved to dismiss the complaint for want of jurisdiction on
the grounds that the § 1983 claim and stay request were the equivalent
of a second or successive habeas application subject to 28 U. S. C.
§ 2244(b)’s gatekeeping requirements. Agreeing, the District Court dis-
missed the complaint because petitioner had not obtained authorization
to file such an application. In affirming, the Eleventh Circuit held that
method-of-execution challenges necessarily sound in habeas, and that it
would have denied a habeas authorization request.
Held: Section 1983 is an appropriate vehicle for petitioner’s Eighth
Amendment claim seeking a temporary stay and permanent injunctive
relief. Pp. 643–651.
(a) Section 1983 must yield to the federal habeas statute where an
inmate seeks injunctive relief challenging the fact of his conviction or
the duration of his sentence. Such claims fall within the core of habeas.
By contrast, constitutional claims challenging confinement conditions
fall outside of that core and may be brought under § 1983 in the first
instance. The Court need not reach here the difficult question of how
method-of-execution claims should be classified generally. Respondents
have conceded that § 1983 would be the appropriate vehicle for an in-
mate who is not facing execution to bring a “deliberate indifference”
challenge to the cut-down procedure’s constitutionality if used to gain
venous access for medical treatment. There is no reason on the com-

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638 NELSON v. CAMPBELL
Syllabus
plaint’s face to treat petitioner’s claim differently solely because he has
been condemned to die. Respondents claim that because the cut-down
is part of the execution procedure, petitioner is actually challenging the
fact of his execution. However, that venous access is a necessary pre-
requisite to execution does not imply that a particular means of gaining
such access is likewise necessary. Petitioner has argued throughout the
proceedings that the cut-down and the warden’s refusal to provide reli-
able information on the cut-down protocol are wholly unnecessary to
gaining venous access. If, after an evidentiary hearing, the District
Court finds the cut-down necessary, it will need to address the broader
method-of-execution question left open here. The instant holding is
consistent with this Court’s approach to civil rights damages actions,
which also fall at the margins of habeas. Pp. 643–647.
(b) If a permanent injunction request does not sound in habeas, it
follows that the lesser included request for a temporary stay (or prelimi-
nary injunction) does not either. Here, a fair reading of the complaint
leaves no doubt that petitioner sought to enjoin the cut-down, not his
execution by lethal injection. However, his stay request asked to stay
his execution, seemingly without regard to whether the State did or did
not resort to the cut-down. The execution warrant has now expired.
If the State reschedules the execution while this case is pending on
remand and petitioner seeks another similarly broad stay, the District
Court will need to address the question whether a request to enjoin
the execution, rather than merely to enjoin an allegedly unnecessary
precursor medical procedure, properly sounds in habeas. Pp. 647–648.
(c) Respondents are incorrect that a reversal here would open the
floodgates to all manner of method-of-execution challenges and last-
minute stay requests. Because this Court does not here resolve the
question of how to treat method-of-execution claims generally, the in-
stant holding is extremely limited. Moreover, merely stating a cogniza-
ble § 1983 claim does not warrant a stay as a matter of right. A court
may consider a stay application’s last-minute nature in deciding whether
to grant such equitable relief. And the ability to bring a § 1983 claim
does not free inmates from the substantive or procedural limitations of
the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Pp. 649–651.
347 F. 3d 910, reversed and remanded.
O’Connor, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.
Bryan A. Stevenson argued the cause for petitioner.
With him on the briefs were Michael Kennedy McIntyre, by
appointment of the Court, 540 U. S. 1102, H. Victoria Smith,
and LaJuana Davis.

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639 Cite as: 541 U. S. 637 (2004)
Opinion of the Court
Kevin C. Newsom, Solicitor General of Alabama, argued
the cause for respondents. With him on the brief were
Richard F. Allen, Acting Attorney General, and Michael B.
Billingsley, Deputy Solicitor General.*
Justice O’Connor delivered the opinion of the Court.
Three days before his scheduled execution by lethal injec-
tion, petitioner David Nelson filed a civil rights action in Dis-
trict Court, pursuant to Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983,
alleging that the use of a “cut-down” procedure to access
his veins would violate the Eighth Amendment. Petitioner,
who had already filed one unsuccessful federal habeas appli-
cation, sought a stay of execution so that the District Court
could consider the merits of his constitutional claim. The
question before us is whether § 1983 is an appropriate vehicle
for petitioner’s Eighth Amendment claim seeking a tempo-
rary stay and permanent injunctive relief. We answer that
question in the affirmative, reverse the contrary judgment
*Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the State of
Ohio et al. by Jim Petro, Attorney General of Ohio, Douglas R. Cole,
State Solicitor, Christopher D. Stock, Deputy Solicitor, Charles L. Wille,
Assistant Attorney General, by Christopher L. Morano, Chief State’s
Attorney of Connecticut, and by the Attorneys General for their respec-
tive States as follows: Terry Goddard of Arizona, Bill Lockyer of Califor-
nia, Ken Salazar of Colorado, M. Jane Brady of Delaware, Charlie Crist
of Florida, Thurbert E. Baker of Georgia, Lawrence G. Wasden of Idaho,
Lisa Madigan of Illinois, Steve Carter of Indiana, Phill Kline of Kansas,
Gregory D. Stumbo of Kentucky, Charles C. Foti, Jr., of Louisiana, Jim
Hood of Mississippi, Jeremiah W. (Jay) Nixon of Missouri, Mike McGrath
of Montana, Jon Bruning of Nebraska, Brian Sandoval of Nevada, Patri-
cia A. Madrid of New Mexico, Roy Cooper of North Carolina, W. A. Drew
Edmondson of Oklahoma, Gerald J. Pappert of Pennsylvania, Henry Dar-
gan McMaster of South Carolina, Lawrence E. Long of South Dakota,
Paul G. Summers of Tennessee, Greg Abbott of Texas, Mark L. Shurtleff
of Utah, Jerry W. Kilgore of Virginia, and Patrick J. Crank of Wyoming;
for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation by Kent S. Scheidegger; and for
Senator Orrin G. Hatch et al. by Ed R. Haden.
George H. Kendall filed a brief for Laurie Dill, M. D., et al. as amici
curiae.

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640 NELSON v. CAMPBELL
Opinion of the Court
of the Eleventh Circuit, and remand the case for further pro-
ceedings consistent with this opinion.
I
Because the District Court dismissed the suit at the plead-
ing stage, we assume the allegations in petitioner’s complaint
to be true. Petitioner was found guilty by a jury in 1979
of capital murder and sentenced to death. Following two
resentencings, the Eleventh Circuit, on June 3, 2002, affirmed
the District Court’s denial of petitioner’s first federal habeas
petition challenging the most recent death sentence. Nel-
son v. Alabama, 292 F. 3d 1291. Up until and at the time
of that disposition, Alabama employed electrocution as its
sole method of execution. On July 1, 2002, Alabama changed
to lethal injection, though it still allowed inmates to opt for
electrocution upon written notification within 30 days of the
Alabama Supreme Court’s entry of judgment or July 1, 2002,
whichever is later. Ala. Code § 15–18–82.1 (Lexis Supp.
2003). Because he failed to make a timely request, peti-
tioner waived his option to be executed by electrocution.
This Court denied petitioner’s request for certiorari re-
view of the Eleventh Circuit’s decision on March 24, 2003.
Nelson v. Alabama, 538 U. S. 926. Two weeks later, the Al-
abama Attorney General’s office moved the Alabama Su-
preme Court to set an execution date. App. 81. Petitioner
responded by letter that he “ha[d] no plans to contest [the]
motion,” agreeing “that an execution date should be set
promptly by the court in the immediate future.” Id., at 89.
Hearing no objection, the Alabama Supreme Court, on Sep-
tember 3, 2003, set petitioner’s execution for October 9, 2003.
Due to years of drug abuse, petitioner has severely com-
promised peripheral veins, which are inaccessible by stand-
ard techniques for gaining intravenous access, such as a nee-
dle. Id., at 7. In August 2003, counsel for petitioner
contacted Grantt Culliver, warden of Holman Correctional
Facility where the execution was to take place, to discuss

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how petitioner’s medical condition might impact the lethal
injection procedure. Counsel specifically requested a copy
of the State’s written protocol for gaining venous access
prior to execution, and asked that a privately retained or
prison physician consult with petitioner about the procedure.
Id., at 8–9, 25–26. The warden advised counsel that the
State had such a protocol, but stated that he could not pro-
vide it to her. He nevertheless assured counsel that “medi-
cal personnel” would be present during the execution and
that a prison physician would evaluate and speak with peti-
tioner upon his arrival at Holman Correctional Facility. Id.,
at 8, 26.
Petitioner was transferred to Holman shortly after the Al-
abama Supreme Court set the execution date. Warden Cul-
liver and a prison nurse met with and examined petitioner
on September 10, 2003. Id., at 9–10. Upon confirming that
petitioner had compromised veins, Warden Culliver informed
petitioner that prison personnel would cut a 0.5-inch incision
in petitioner’s arm and catheterize a vein 24 hours before the
scheduled execution. Id., at 11. At a second meeting on
Friday, October 3, 2003, the warden dramatically altered the
prognosis: prison personnel would now make a 2-inch incision
in petitioner’s arm or leg; the procedure would take place
one hour before the scheduled execution; and only local anes-
thesia would be used. Id., at 12. There was no assurance
that a physician would perform or even be present for the
procedure. Counsel immediately contacted the Alabama
Department of Corrections Legal Department requesting a
copy of the State’s execution protocol. Id., at 13, 27. The
legal department denied counsel’s request. Id., at 28.
The following Monday, three days before his scheduled ex-
ecution, petitioner filed the present § 1983 action alleging
that the so-called “cut-down” procedure constituted cruel
and unusual punishment and deliberate indifference to his
serious medical needs in violation of the Eighth Amendment.
Id., at 21 (complaint), 102 (amended complaint). Petitioner

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sought: a permanent injunction against use of the cut-down;
a temporary stay of execution to allow the District Court to
consider the merits of his claim; an order requiring respond-
ents to furnish a copy of the protocol setting forth the medi-
cal procedures to be used to gain venous access; and an order
directing respondents, in consultation with medical experts,
to promulgate a venous access protocol that comports with
contemporary standards of medical care. Id., at 22. Ap-
pended to the complaint was an affidavit from Dr. Mark
Heath, a board certified anesthesiologist and assistant pro-
fessor at Columbia University College of Physicians and Sur-
geons, attesting that the cut-down is a dangerous and anti-
quated medical procedure to be performed only by a trained
physician in a clinical environment with the patient under
deep sedation. In light of safer and less-invasive contempo-
rary means of venous access, Dr. Heath concluded that
“there is no comprehensible reason for the State of Alabama
to be planning to employ the cut-down procedure to obtain
intravenous access, unless there exists an intent to render
the procedure more painful and risky than it otherwise needs
to be.” Id., at 37.
Respondents moved to dismiss the complaint for want of
jurisdiction on the grounds that petitioner’s § 1983 claim and
accompanying stay request were the “ ‘functional equiva-
lent’ ” of a second or successive habeas application subject to
the gatekeeping provisions of 28 U. S. C. § 2244(b). App. 82.
The District Court agreed and, because petitioner had not
obtained authorization to file a second or successive applica-
tion as required by § 2244(b)(3), dismissed the complaint. A
divided panel of the Eleventh Circuit affirmed. Relying on
Fugate v. Department of Corrections, 301 F. 3d 1287 (2002),
in which the Eleventh Circuit had held that § 1983 claims
challenging the method of execution necessarily sound in ha-
beas, the majority held that petitioner should have sought
authorization to file a second or successive habeas applica-
tion. 347 F. 3d 910, 912 (2003). The majority also con-

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cluded that, even were it to construe petitioner’s appeal as a
request for such authorization, it would nevertheless deny
the request because petitioner could not show that, but for
the purported Eighth Amendment violation, “ ‘no reasonable
factfinder would have found [him] guilty of the underly-
ing offense.’ ” Ibid. (quoting 28 U. S. C. § 2244(b)(2)(B)(ii)).
Thus, the Eleventh Circuit held that petitioner was without
recourse to challenge the constitutionality of the cut-down
procedure in Federal District Court. We granted certiorari,
540 U. S. 1046 (2003), and now reverse.
II
A
Section 1983 authorizes a “suit in equity, or other proper
proceeding for redress,” against any person who, under color
of state law, “subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen
of the United States . . . to the deprivation of any rights,
privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution.”
Petitioner’s complaint states such a claim. Despite its lit-
eral applicability, however, § 1983 must yield to the more spe-
cific federal habeas statute, with its attendant procedural
and exhaustion requirements, where an inmate seeks injunc-
tive relief challenging the fact of his conviction or the dura-
tion of his sentence. See Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 475,
489 (1973). Such claims fall within the “core” of habeas cor-
pus and are thus not cognizable when brought pursuant
to § 1983. Ibid. By contrast, constitutional claims that
merely challenge the conditions of a prisoner’s confinement,
whether the inmate seeks monetary or injunctive relief, fall
outside of that core and may be brought pursuant to § 1983
in the first instance. See Muhammad v. Close, 540 U. S.
749, 750 (2004) (per curiam); Preiser, supra, at 498–499.
We have not yet had occasion to consider whether civil
rights suits seeking to enjoin the use of a particular method
of execution—e. g., lethal injection or electrocution—fall
within the core of federal habeas corpus or, rather, whether

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they are properly viewed as challenges to the conditions of
a condemned inmate’s death sentence. Neither the “condi-
tions” nor the “fact or duration” label is particularly apt. A
suit seeking to enjoin a particular means of effectuating a
sentence of death does not directly call into question the
“fact” or “validity” of the sentence itself—by simply altering
its method of execution, the State can go forward with the
sentence. Cf. Weaver v. Graham, 450 U. S. 24, 32–33, n. 17
(1981) (no ex post facto violation to change method of execu-
tion to more humane method). On the other hand, imposi-
tion of the death penalty presupposes a means of carrying it
out. In a State such as Alabama, where the legislature has
established lethal injection as the preferred method of execu-
tion, see Ala. Code § 15–18–82 (Lexis Supp. 2003) (lethal in-
jection as default method), a constitutional challenge seeking
to permanently enjoin the use of lethal injection may amount
to a challenge to the fact of the sentence itself. A finding of
unconstitutionality would require statutory amendment or
variance, imposing significant costs on the State and the ad-
ministration of its penal system. And while it makes little
sense to talk of the “duration” of a death sentence, a State
retains a significant interest in meting out a sentence of
death in a timely fashion. See Calderon v. Thompson, 523
U. S. 538, 556–557 (1998); In re Blodgett, 502 U. S. 236, 238
(1992) (per curiam); McCleskey v. Zant, 499 U. S. 467, 491
(1991) (“[T]he power of a State to pass laws means little if
the State cannot enforce them”).
We need not reach here the difficult question of how to
categorize method-of-execution claims generally. Respond-
ents at oral argument conceded that § 1983 would be an ap-
propriate vehicle for an inmate who is not facing execution
to bring a “deliberate indifference” challenge to the constitu-
tionality of the cut-down procedure if used to gain venous
access for purposes of providing medical treatment. Tr. of
Oral Arg. 40 (“I don’t disagree . . . that a cut-down occurring
for purposes of venous access, wholly divorced from an exe-

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cution, is indeed a valid conditions of confinement claim”);
see also Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U. S. 97, 104 (1976) (“We
therefore conclude that deliberate indifference to serious
medical needs of prisoners constitutes the ‘unnecessary and
wanton infliction of pain’ proscribed by the Eighth Amend-
ment” (citation omitted)). We see no reason on the face of
the complaint to treat petitioner’s claim differently solely be-
cause he has been condemned to die.
Respondents counter that, because the cut-down is part of
the execution procedure, petitioner’s challenge is, in fact, a
challenge to the fact of his execution. They offer the follow-
ing argument: A challenge to the use of lethal injection as a
method of execution sounds in habeas; venous access is a
necessary prerequisite to, and thus an indispensable part of,
any lethal injection procedure; therefore, a challenge to the
State’s means of achieving venous access must be brought in
a federal habeas application. Even were we to accept as
given respondents’ premise that a challenge to lethal injec-
tion sounds in habeas, the conclusion does not follow. That
venous access is a necessary prerequisite does not imply that
a particular means of gaining such access is likewise neces-
sary. Indeed, the gravamen of petitioner’s entire claim is
that use of the cut-down would be gratuitous. Merely label-
ing something as part of an execution procedure is insuffi-
cient to insulate it from a § 1983 attack.
If as a legal matter the cut-down were a statutorily man-
dated part of the lethal injection protocol, or if as a factual
matter petitioner were unable or unwilling to concede ac-
ceptable alternatives for gaining venous access, respondents
might have a stronger argument that success on the mer-
its, coupled with injunctive relief, would call into question
the death sentence itself. But petitioner has been careful
throughout these proceedings, in his complaint and at oral
argument, to assert that the cut-down, as well as the war-
den’s refusal to provide reliable information regarding the
cut-down protocol, are wholly unnecessary to gaining venous

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access. Petitioner has alleged alternatives that, if they had
been used, would have allowed the State to proceed with the
execution as scheduled. App. 17 (complaint) (proffering as
“less invasive, less painful, faster, cheaper, and safer” the
alternative procedure of “percutaneous central line place-
ment”); id., at 37–38 (affidavit of Dr. Mark Heath) (describing
relative merits of the cut-down and percutaneous central line
placement). No Alabama statute requires use of the cut-
down, see Ala. Code § 15–18–82 (Lexis Supp. 2003) (saying
only that method of execution is lethal injection), and re-
spondents have offered no duly-promulgated regulations to
the contrary.
If on remand and after an evidentiary hearing the District
Court concludes that use of the cut-down procedure as de-
scribed in the complaint is necessary for administering the
lethal injection, the District Court will need to address the
broader question, left open here, of how to treat method-of-
execution claims generally. An evidentiary hearing will in
all likelihood be unnecessary, however, as the State now
seems willing to implement petitioner’s proposed alterna-
tives. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 45–46 (“I think there is no dis-
agreement here that percutaneous central line placement is
the preferred method and will, in fact, be used, a cut-down
to be used only if actually necessary”).
We note that our holding here is consistent with our ap-
proach to civil rights damages actions, which, like method-
of-execution challenges, fall at the margins of habeas. Al-
though damages are not an available habeas remedy, we have
previously concluded that a § 1983 suit for damages that
would “necessarily imply” the invalidity of the fact of an in-
mate’s conviction, or “necessarily imply” the invalidity of the
length of an inmate’s sentence, is not cognizable under § 1983
unless and until the inmate obtains favorable termination of
a state, or federal habeas, challenge to his conviction or sen-
tence. Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U. S. 477, 487 (1994); Ed-
wards v. Balisok, 520 U. S. 641, 648 (1997). This “favorable

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termination” requirement is necessary to prevent inmates
from doing indirectly through damages actions what they
could not do directly by seeking injunctive relief—challenge
the fact or duration of their confinement without complying
with the procedural limitations of the federal habeas statute.
Muhammad, 540 U. S., at 751. Even so, we were careful in
Heck to stress the importance of the term “necessarily.”
For instance, we acknowledged that an inmate could bring a
challenge to the lawfulness of a search pursuant to § 1983 in
the first instance, even if the search revealed evidence used
to convict the inmate at trial, because success on the merits
would not “necessarily imply that the plaintiff ’s conviction
was unlawful.” 512 U. S., at 487, n. 7 (noting doctrines such
as inevitable discovery, independent source, and harmless
error). To hold otherwise would have cut off potentially
valid damages actions as to which a plaintiff might never
obtain favorable termination—suits that could otherwise
have gone forward had the plaintiff not been convicted. In
the present context, focusing attention on whether petition-
er’s challenge to the cut-down procedure would necessarily
prevent Alabama from carrying out its execution both pro-
tects against the use of § 1983 to circumvent any limits
imposed by the habeas statute and minimizes the extent
to which the fact of a prisoner’s imminent execution will
require differential treatment of his otherwise cognizable
§ 1983 claims.
B
There remains the question whether petitioner’s request
for a temporary stay of execution, subsequently recharacter-
ized by petitioner as a request for a preliminary injunction,
App. 49, transformed his conditions of confinement claim into
a challenge to the validity of his death sentence. Normally,
it would not. If a request for a permanent injunction does
not sound in habeas, it follows that the lesser included re-
quest for a temporary stay (or preliminary injunction) does
not either.

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There is a complication in the present case, however. In
his prayer for relief, petitioner asked the District Court,
among other things, to “[e]nter an order granting injunctive
relief and staying [petitioner’s] execution, which is currently
scheduled for October 9, 2003.” Id., at 22. Though he did
not specify what permanent injunctive relief he was seeking,
a fair reading of the complaint leaves no doubt that peti-
tioner was asking only to enjoin the State’s use of the cut-
down, not his execution by lethal injection. The same can-
not be said of petitioner’s stay request. There, he explicitly
requested that the District Court stay his execution, seem-
ingly without regard to whether the State did or did not
resort to the cut-down. This observation is potentially sig-
nificant given the fact that the State has maintained, from
the outset of this litigation, that it would attempt other
methods of venous access prior to engaging in the cut-down.
See id., at 51–52; id., at 93–94 (affidavit of Warden Culliver).
By asking for broader relief than necessary, petitioner un-
dermines his assertions that: (1) his § 1983 suit is not a tactic
for delay, and (2) he is not challenging the fact of his execu-
tion, but merely a dispensable preliminary procedure.
Whatever problem this failing might have caused before
this Court entered a stay, the execution warrant has now
expired. If the State reschedules the execution while this
case is pending on remand and petitioner seeks another simi-
larly broad stay, the District Court will need to address the
question whether a request to enjoin the execution, rather
than merely to enjoin an allegedly unnecessary precursor
medical procedure, properly sounds in habeas. See also 18
U. S. C. § 3626(a)(2) (“Preliminary injunctive relief [in prison
conditions cases] must be narrowly drawn, extend no further
than necessary to correct the harm the court finds requires
preliminary relief, and be the least intrusive means neces-
sary to correct that harm”).

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C
Respondents argue that a decision to reverse the judg-
ment of the Eleventh Circuit would open the floodgates to
all manner of method-of-execution challenges, as well as last
minute stay requests. But, because we do not here resolve
the question of how to treat method-of-execution claims gen-
erally, our holding is extremely limited.
Moreover, as our previous decision in Gomez v. United
States Dist. Court for Northern Dist. of Cal., 503 U. S. 653
(1992) (per curiam), makes clear, the mere fact that an in-
mate states a cognizable § 1983 claim does not warrant the
entry of a stay as a matter of right. Gomez came to us on
a motion by the State to vacate a stay entered by an en banc
panel of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that
would have allowed the District Court time to consider the
merits of a condemned inmate’s last-minute § 1983 action
challenging the constitutionality of California’s use of the gas
chamber. We left open the question whether the inmate’s
claim was cognizable under § 1983, but vacated the stay
nonetheless. The inmate, Robert Alton Harris, who had al-
ready filed four unsuccessful federal habeas applications,
waited until the eleventh hour to file his challenge despite
the fact that California’s method of execution had been in
place for years: “This claim could have been brought more
than a decade ago. There is no good reason for this abusive
delay, which has been compounded by last-minute attempts
to manipulate the judicial process. A court may consider
the last-minute nature of an application to stay execution in
deciding whether to grant equitable relief.” Id., at 654.
A stay is an equitable remedy, and “[e]quity must take into
consideration the State’s strong interest in proceeding with
its judgment and . . . attempt[s] at manipulation.” Ibid.
Thus, before granting a stay, a district court must consider
not only the likelihood of success on the merits and the rela-
tive harms to the parties, but also the extent to which the

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inmate has delayed unnecessarily in bringing the claim.
Given the State’s significant interest in enforcing its criminal
judgments, see Blodgett, 502 U. S., at 239; McCleskey, 499
U. S., at 491, there is a strong equitable presumption against
the grant of a stay where a claim could have been brought
at such a time as to allow consideration of the merits without
requiring entry of a stay.
Finally, the ability to bring a § 1983 claim, rather than a
habeas application, does not entirely free inmates from sub-
stantive or procedural limitations. The Prison Litigation
Reform Act of 1995 (Act) imposes limits on the scope and
duration of preliminary and permanent injunctive relief, in-
cluding a requirement that, before issuing such relief, “[a]
court shall give substantial weight to any adverse impact on
. . . the operation of a criminal justice system caused by the
relief.” 18 U. S. C. § 3626(a)(1); accord, § 3626(a)(2). It re-
quires that inmates exhaust available state administrative
remedies before bringing a § 1983 action challenging the con-
ditions of their confinement. 110 Stat. 1321–71, 42 U. S. C.
§ 1997e(a) (“No action shall be brought with respect to prison
conditions under section 1983 of this title, or any other Fed-
eral law, by a prisoner confined in any jail, prison, or other
correctional facility until such administrative remedies as are
available are exhausted”). The Act mandates that a district
court “shall,” on its own motion, dismiss “any action brought
with respect to prison conditions under section 1983 of this
title . . . if the court is satisfied that the action is frivolous,
malicious, fails to state a claim upon which relief can be
granted, or seeks monetary relief from a defendant who is
immune from such relief.” § 1997e(c)(1). Indeed, if the
claim is frivolous on its face, a district court may dismiss the
suit before the plaintiff has exhausted his state remedies.
§ 1997e(c)(2).

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651 Cite as: 541 U. S. 637 (2004)
Opinion of the Court
For the reasons stated herein, the judgment of the Court
of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit is reversed, and the case
is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this
opinion.
It is so ordered.