Warning! Theoretical point 
Shvili,
I have to side with AGC4ME on this. There is a difference between court jurisdiction and court ability to grant a relief. By dismissing a case for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, the courts says that it does not have a legal basis to review the case. So in mandamus action it's not necessary to show that all 3 factors are satisfied fo jurisdictional purposes, because 1361 refers only to the "duty owed". See also Ahmed v DHS (7th Cir), another appellate case.
The other factors (right to relief, exhaustion of remedies) may require additional fact finding (discovery). I did not see a single ruling on appellate level that would agree with district court reasoning that all 3 factors must be satisfied for jurisdictional purposes.
Lazycis, although the mandamus statue only mentions the duty, most judges on the district level always consider 3 prerequisites (aka "prongs", aka "requirements") for mandamus because it's an "extraordinary remedy".
Overall, most of confusion comes because many legal issues have NO STRICT DEFINITIONS of terminology and laws. Plus most law practitioners/writers are not really predisposed to strict mathematical or scientific logic
. If they were, most of the problems in hand would not exist and all statues/decisions would be much clearer.
So I took some time and read a few cases and here's a few findings: unfortunately, no clear opinion on 3 prerequisites for mandamus. Again, the question I raised (and GC4ME and Lazycis commented) was:
do these 3 prerequisites (1:clear right to relief, 2:agency has a duty to act, and 3:no other remedy exists for plaintiff) provide grounds for court jurisdiction to review mandamus complaint, or are they only necessary in order to GRANT RELIEF UNDER mandamus??? -To be consistent, these 3 prerequisites should form jurisdiction for mandamus complaint first.Then, if jurisdiction is accepted, one or more prongs will be evaluated in detail to grant relief under mandamus. Lazycis and GC4ME opinion is: only the "duty" is considered for jurisdiction and the other 2 prongs need more facts and are relevant to relief under statues and so are discussed in later phases.. I am really neutral to either interpretation of this point. Again, it would be equally fine if only "duty" was considered to be a prerequisite for mandamus jurisdiction (and 2 other prongs only mattered for further stages), -but if all 3 are called "prerequisites", it would be really nice to have a clear plan on when these prerequisites are evaluated. So the reason I took pains to research it is to establish some consistency and clarity (and alas! it lacks in most of judges rulings
). Another unclear point: is Mandamus RELIEF (mentioned in statue) =relief granted under mandamus (i.e., court compels agency to perform an action), or does this relief merely mean that district court HAS JURISDICTION TO CONSIDER mandamus complaint? Again, depending on the case and the judge, interpretations vary
.
My findings are based on denials of MTD,-(I didn't find any appeals court references, except one reference in Spenser: judge said, s/he must consider jurisdiction sua sponte but did not consider 3 prongs).
In the case of Alsharqawi (denying MTD) the judge says: ""because compelling agency action is an extraordinary remedy,
REGARDLESS OF the STATUE FROM WHICH THE REMEDY DERIVES, RELIEF IS APPROPRIATE, AND JURISDICTION LIES, ONLY WHEN the plaintiff can establish "a clear right to the relief sought, a clear duty by the defendant to do the particular act and that no other adequate remedy is available"" (quoting from another case, p.5). Judge further considers 3 prongs for both, jurisdiction and the relief under mandamus and APA. In the case of He, (my favorite reasoning by pro se plaintiff), she talks of 3 prongs in order to receive mandamus relief. Her interpretation of Mandamus relief: "the court compels agency to perform delayed action". However, her judge (in her denial of MTD) said: "the district court has
DISCRETION to issue a writ of mandamus even where the prerequisites have been satisfied" (p. 6) Further down: "plaintiff failed to meet second prong of mandamus test" and finally, quoting Paunescu: "finding mandamus
JURISDICTION because 3 mandamus requirements were satisfied".(p. 7) So this reasoning corresponds to my previous interpretation: the 3 prongs must be met in order to establish jurisdiction to consider mandamus. In Chen's case- a footnote quoting Singh case:"...defendants have considered mandamus relief is possible so long as the requirements are met" (p. 6) So: relief is POSSIBLE (-but not assumed or granted), once 3 prongs are met. If the 3 prongs are met, then judges discuss unreasonable delay and specifically the duty to act under APA and then deny MTD.
These interpretations rather support my previous thought, but I am sure that opposing interpretations can be found in other rulings. My initial post was related to the inconsistent reference to these 3 prongs by the Appeliate judge in Rios and based on these specific judges interpretations, it still looks inconsistent to me. So I agree with "There is a difference between court jurisdiction and court ability to grant a relief". I just say that strictly speaking, it looks like these prerequisites should be first forming jurisdiction for mandamus, not just basis for relief under it.
This confusion is also caused by the fact that the main question in most cases is: "is there a duty owed?" and judges also focus on important distinction of facial attack vs. factual attack. So in most cases discussion jumps to "duty to act" and then directly to "granting relief under mandamus".
