Mandamus petitions and not-so-subtle hints

Contemporary mandamus practice in the Fifth Circuit is well-illustrated by In re JPMorgan Chase, in which the Court concluded:

1. An order requiring individual notice to 42,000 former Chase employees, as part of the conditional certification of a collective action under the FLSA, was not remediable by an ordinary appeal;
2. The issue of whether notice should be sent to employees with arbitration agreements — roughly 30,000 of the relevant employees — “has importance well beyond this case, so mandamus relief would be appropriate;
3. The district court’s decision to require notice to those “Arbitration Employees” was not a “clear and indisputable” error, given the state of the case law at the time of its decision; but 
4. After review of the law, the Court concluded that the district court was in fact wrong. As the court had now “issue[d] this published as a holding on these legal issues,” it stayed the case for thirty days “[t]o facilitate . . . review” of “its decision in light of this opinion, which is now binding precedent throughout the Fifth Circuit.”

No. 18-20825 (Feb. 21, 2019) (applying, inter alia. In re: Depuy Orthopaedics, Inc., 870 F.3d 345, 350 (5th Cir. 2017)).