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Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 13-3839

RICHARD WAGONER,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

BRUCE LEMMON, Commissioner of the Indiana Department of 

Corrections, and INDIANA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS,

Defendants-Appellees.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Indiana, South Bend Division.

No. 3:05-cv-438 — Christopher A. Nuechterlein, Magistrate Judge.

____________________

ARGUED SEPTEMBER 18, 2014 — DECIDED FEBRUARY 4, 2015

____________________

Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and POSNER and MANION, Circuit Judges.

WOOD, Chief Judge. This appeal requires us to revisit the 

rule imposed by the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) 

requiring a prisoner to exhaust any available administrative 

remedies before challenging her conditions of confinement 

in a federal court. See 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a). Often exhaustion 

(or its lack) will be apparent, but when it is not, the district 

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court must hold an evidentiary hearing to resolve the question. See Pavey v. Conley, 544 F.3d 739 (7th Cir. 2008). A Pavey 

hearing serves a limited but important role: it helps the 

judge decide whether the court or the prison is the proper 

forum for the prisoner’s grievance. A proper Pavey hearing 

should be conducted before an adjudication on the merits. In 

the present case, that did not happen, because the prisoner 

failed to submit his renewed motion for a Pavey hearing as 

directed by the district court. We must decide whether the 

court abused its discretion in denying that hearing and

whether the Commissioner and the Indiana Department of 

Corrections were entitled to summary judgment.

I

For twelve years, Richard Wagoner was incarcerated in 

various facilities overseen by the Indiana Department of 

Corrections (IDOC). Wagoner is paraplegic, as a result of severe injuries he sustained in a car accident in 1996, and thus 

he needs a wheelchair. In 2005, five years into his confinement, Wagoner filed a pro se complaint in which he asserted 

that IDOC had failed properly to accommodate his disability 

and had thus violated his civil and constitutional rights. The 

district court eventually recruited counsel for Wagoner, and 

counsel submitted the operative third amended complaint

on September 6, 2011. That complaint alleged that IDOC and 

its Commissioner (in his official capacity) had committed 

various violations of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, redressable under 42 U.S.C. 

§ 1983, and had violated Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. § 12131 et seq., and Section 504 

of the Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. § 794, as well. The complaint identified eight particular grievances, including 1) inCase: 13-3839 Document: 33 Filed: 02/04/2015 Pages: 12
No. 13-3839 3

adequate and humiliating toileting arrangements; 2) a cell so 

small that Wagoner had to move his wheelchair every time 

his cellmate needed to use the toilet; 3) sidewalks that 

caused him to tip out of his wheelchair and fall to the 

ground; 4) no access to the weight room or the library because of space constraints; 5) ongoing problems with his 

wheelchair and its repair; 6) failures to provide him with 

other medical supplies; 7) exclusion from a job training program; and 8) transportation in a vehicle not equipped for 

wheelchairs—a shortcoming that led once to Wagoner’s 

catheter becoming dislodged and that forced him to crawl on 

the van’s floor in order to get out of the vehicle.

IDOC, acting for itself and the Commissioner, filed a motion for summary judgment. IDOC argued it was entitled to 

judgment as a matter of law for several reasons, including 

that Wagoner had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies as required by the PLRA. On April 18, 2013, Wagoner 

filed a motion for a Pavey hearing to determine whether he 

had, in fact, exhausted his administrative remedies. On May 

20, 2013, the court denied that motion without prejudice, 

with this explanation: 

The Court acknowledges Plaintiff’s apparent interest 

in clarifying the proper timing of a Pavey hearing presumably to ensure that the opportunity is not lost by 

litigating the pending motion for summary judgment. 

However, Plaintiff has not yet established that a dispute of fact as to whether Plaintiff exhausted his administrative remedies before filing this action exists.

Therefore, the Court has no reason to schedule a 

Pavey hearing. Plaintiff may use his response to Defendants’ motion for summary judgment to create

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such a record. If he does, the Court will schedule a 

Pavey hearing should exhaustion remain an issue after 

the Court’s full consideration of the pending motion 

for summary judgment.

Rather than follow the court’s order to combine his brief 

in opposition to summary judgment with facts supporting 

the need for a Pavey hearing, Wagoner filed a brief in opposition to IDOC’s motion for summary judgment on June 14, 

2013. Over a month later, he filed a separate motion requesting a Pavey hearing. This second Pavey motion, though similar to the first, filled in the evidentiary blanks that had existed. It included a lengthy excerpt of Wagoner’s deposition in 

which he recounted with more particularity IDOC’s threats 

when he filed grievances and support for his contention that 

futility excused any failure to exhaust that existed. 

On November 26, 2013, the district court granted IDOC’s 

motion for summary judgment. The magistrate judge, acting 

with the consent of the parties pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 636(c),

refused to consider Wagoner’s second Pavey motion “or any 

of the accompanying exhibits as part of its exhaustion analysis.” Without those materials, the court concluded that Wagoner was not entitled to a Pavey hearing. It found that Wagoner had properly exhausted only two grievances (one concerning repair of his wheelchair and the other the improper 

transportation to a medical appointment). As to the remaining claims, the district court concluded that IDOC and the 

Commissioner were entitled to judgment as a matter of law:

neither IDOC nor the Commissioner was a proper party under Section 1983, Wagoner had not been denied access within the meaning of the Rehabilitation Act or the ADA, and 

qualified immunity protects the Commissioner from indiCase: 13-3839 Document: 33 Filed: 02/04/2015 Pages: 12
No. 13-3839 5

vidual liability under the Rehabilitation Act. (It is not clear 

why the court included the last of those points: these were 

official-capacity claims, and the doctrine of qualified immunity applies to individual persons, not to state agencies or 

official-capacity suits. See, e.g., Hafer v. Melo, 502 U.S. 21, 25 

(1991).) 

Wagoner appeals on two grounds. He argues that the 

district court committed reversible error when it denied his 

second request for a Pavey hearing. Wagoner also asserts that 

the district court erred in granting summary judgment in favor of IDOC and its Commissioner.

II

We begin with the district court’s handling of Wagoner’s 

requests for a Pavey hearing. A word about the standard of 

review is in order, since the parties have different views on 

the matter. Wagoner asks us to review the denial of a Pavey 

hearing de novo because it is a legal interpretation of the 

PLRA and not a factual finding. IDOC suggests that the 

more appropriate standard is abuse of discretion, since the 

district court had to exercise some judgment in coming to its 

conclusion. In a sense, they are both correct. We review the 

threshold question whether a Pavey hearing is required at all 

de novo, as it is ultimately an interpretation of the federal 

statute. To the extent we are considering trial management,

however, the standard is abuse of discretion. 

Since the passage of the PLRA, exhaustion of remedies is 

not optional for a prisoner in cases to which it applies. See 42 

U.S.C. § 1997e(a). As the Supreme Court noted, “A centerpiece of the PLRA’s effort to reduce the quantity ... of prisoner suits is an invigorated exhaustion provision.” Woodford 

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v. Ngo, 548 U.S. 81, 84 (2006) (citations and quotation marks 

omitted). In Pavey, we attempted to flesh out the practical 

application of this rule. We held that a prisoner is not entitled to a jury trial on contested issues regarding his failure to 

exhaust; instead, a hearing before the district court suffices 

to resolve any such questions. We then outlined the procedure that the court should follow: 

(1) The district judge conducts a hearing on 

exhaustion and permits whatever discovery relating to exhaustion he deems appropriate. (2) 

If the judge determines that the prisoner did 

not exhaust his administrative remedies, the 

judge will then determine whether (a) the 

plaintiff has failed to exhaust his administrative remedies, and so he must go back and exhaust; (b) or, although he has no unexhausted 

administrative remedies, the failure to exhaust 

was innocent (as where prison officials prevent 

a prisoner from exhausting his remedies), and 

so he must be given another chance to exhaust 

(provided that there exist remedies that he will 

be permitted by the prison authorities to exhaust, so that he’s not just being given a runaround); or (c) the failure to exhaust was the 

prisoner’s fault, in which event the case is over. 

(3) If and when the judge determines that the 

prisoner has properly exhausted his administrative remedies, the case will proceed to pretrial discovery, and if necessary a trial, on the 

merits; and if there is a jury trial, the jury will 

make all necessary findings of fact without being bound by (or even informed of) any of the 

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No. 13-3839 7

findings made by the district judge in determining that the prisoner had exhausted his 

administrative remedies.

Pavey, 544 F.3d at 742.

Wagoner contends that the district court improperly denied his request to conduct the hearing prescribed in Step #1 

of Pavey. For support, he cites to two pre-Pavey, but postPLRA, cases. In Lewis v. Washington, this court remanded a 

PLRA case to the district court to consider whether administrative remedies for a particular grievance were available 

given the prison official’s failure to respond. 300 F.3d 829, 

835 (7th Cir. 2002). Wagoner’s case is different, however, because the court did consider, grievance by grievance, whether he had exhausted. 

In Dale v. Lappin, the other case Wagoner cites for support, we admonished the district judge for failing to address 

any of the prisoner’s exhaustion evidence and instead 

“merely describ[ing] his allegations as ‘bald assertions’” 

even though the prisoner had specifically identified instances where prison employees had denied him the grievance 

forms he requested. 376 F.3d 652, 655–56 (7th Cir. 2004) (citing Miller v. Norris, 247 F.3d 736, 740 (8th Cir. 2001) (“[A] 

remedy that prison officials prevent a prisoner from ‘utiliz[ing]’ is not an ‘available’ remedy under § 1997e(a).”)). 

Most of Wagoner’s assertions about his attempts to pursue 

his administrative remedies involve either being unable to 

get into the office to voice his complaint because of the steps 

or verbal comments from IDOC officials. 

But Wagoner’s biggest problem stems from his failure to 

follow the court’s order to include his renewed Pavey motion 

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(and supporting evidence) in his brief in opposition to 

IDOC’s motion for summary judgment. Instead, contrary to 

the court’s instructions, he bifurcated the two submissions 

and waited a month after submitting his brief in opposition 

to summary judgment to file his second Pavey motion.

Wagoner says that he followed this procedure in order to 

avoid confusion on the issues. But it was not up to him to 

override the court’s considered choice. It is true that the 

court’s role is different for the two matters, but we have no 

reason to think that the magistrate judge was unaware of 

this fact. The judge, not the litigants, is responsible for directing pretrial traffic, and a party does not get to pick which 

court orders to follow. The magistrate judge had granted 

Wagoner’s motions for extensions of time to file the proper 

briefs. The judge did not abuse his discretion in refusing to 

consider those materials, because Wagoner did not comply 

with the order on when and how to submit them.

All of that said, as a matter of best practices we do not 

endorse the combining of a Pavey motion with a summary 

judgment response. The purpose of a Pavey hearing is to resolve disputed factual questions that bear on exhaustion, including what steps were taken and whether the futility exception might apply. Wagoner’s case was far from openand-shut. The fact that he was able to exhaust two of his 

claims offers a reason to reject his claim that he was prevented from exhausting his other six. On the other hand, IDOC 

took five years to get Wagoner a new wheelchair. That strikes 

us as an extraordinarily long time, and it raises a legitimate 

question of futility. An evidentiary hearing could have clarified these matters, and we know from Wagoner’s untimely 

submission that there was more he might have proffered. 

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To be clear, we do not regard the court’s initial ruling as 

the only one that would have been supportable. Just as the 

court did not abuse its discretion in requiring more evidence 

before moving to the hearing, it would not have abused its 

discretion by holding a Pavey hearing based on Wagoner’s 

first motion. Cf. Roberts v. Neal, 745 F.3d 232, 236 (7th Cir. 

2014) (holding that it was improper for the court to grant 

summary judgment for prison officials without conducting a 

Pavey hearing); see also Swisher v. Porter Ctny. Sheriff’s Dep’t, 

769 F.3d 553 (7th Cir. 2014). The logic of Pavey is in some tension with a decision to combine the resolution of facts pertinent to exhaustion with the decision whether there are facts 

warranting a trial. Pavey’s central holding is that exhaustion 

is not a question for the jury at trial, but instead is a preliminary issue for the court. Summary judgment, in contrast, is 

designed to weed out cases that must to go to a trier of fact 

from those that present no such issues. Separation of the exhaustion inquiry from summary judgment will thus promote 

clear decisionmaking.

III

We now turn to the question whether summary judgment in favor of IDOC and the Commissioner was correctly 

granted. We review that part of the court’s order under the 

familiar standard under which we look at the record in the 

light most favorable to the non-moving party, Hayes v. 

Snyder, 546 F.3d 516, 522 (7th Cir. 2008), and uphold the 

judgment only if there are no genuine issues of material fact 

and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. 

FED. R. CIV. P. 56. We address in order Wagoner’s claims 

based on Section 1983, Title II of the ADA, and Section 504 of 

the Rehabilitation Act.

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Section 1983—The district court properly dismissed Wagoner’s Section 1983 claims for violations of his Eighth and 

Fourteenth Amendment rights. IDOC and the Commissioner 

in his official capacity are not “persons” within the meaning 

of the statute. See Dobbey v. Ill. Dep't of Corr., 574 F.3d 443, 

444 (7th Cir. 2009) (citing Will v. Mich. Dep’t of State Police, 

491 U.S. 58 (1989)). And as we have noted, Wagoner did not 

raise any claim against the Commissioner in his individual 

capacity. Even if he had, it would have gone nowhere, because individual-capacity claims cannot rest on a respondeat 

superior theory. Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 676 (2009). 

Title II of the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act—The district 

court also properly dismissed Wagoner’s ADA and Rehabilitation Act claims. To establish a violation of Title II of the 

ADA, “the plaintiff must prove that he is a ‘qualified individual with a disability,’ that he was denied ‘the benefits of 

the services, programs, or activities of a public entity’ or otherwise subjected to discrimination by such an entity, and 

that the denial or discrimination was ‘by reason of’ his disability.” Love v. Westville Corr. Ctr., 103 F.3d 558, 560 (7th Cir. 

1996) (citing 42 U.S.C. § 12132). The Rehabilitation Act claim 

is functionally identical: it requires the plaintiff to allege that 

“(1) he is a qualified person (2) with a disability and (3) the 

[state agency] denied him access to a program or activity because of his disability.” Jaros v. Ill. Dep't of Corr., 684 F.3d 

667, 672 (7th Cir. 2012). For the Rehabilitation Act to apply, 

the relevant state agency (here the corrections department)

must accept federal funds, which all states do. Id. at 671 

(“[T]he analysis governing each statute is the same except 

that the Rehabilitation Act includes as an additional element 

the receipt of federal funds, which all states accept for their 

prisons”) (citations omitted). Wagoner’s paraplegia qualifies 

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as a disability. The only question is whether IDOC denied 

him access to any program or service.

Had Wagoner exhausted his administrative remedies for 

some of his complaints, such as his exclusion from the Department of Labor program and the law library, he might 

have been entitled to pursue his theories under the ADA or 

the Rehabilitation Act. As matters stand, however, all but 

two of his claims are procedurally barred. The two that survive are the grievance about the condition of his wheelchair 

and its repair and IDOC’s improper transportation of Wagoner in that ill-equipped van. But these claims are a poor fit 

for the statutes Wagoner has invoked. He does not allege, for 

example, that the failure to provide him with an adequate 

wheelchair backrest or a wheelchair-ready van (however inappropriate those failings might otherwise have been) denied him access to any services or programs. 

Wagoner’s strongest argument is that by failing to repair 

his wheelchair, IDOC impeded his access to facilities available to non-disabled prisoners. But Wagoner has not asserted 

as did the prisoner in Love v. Westville Correctional Center, 

that he was “denied all access to some programs and activities, and his access to others was severely limited.” 103 F.3d 

at 560. Wagoner says only that he was inconvenienced with 

longer waits and humiliation, as when he had to crawl off 

the regular van because it did not accommodate his wheelchair. These disconcerting allegations do not amount to a 

denial of services within the meaning of either statute. Wagoner could have claimed that the wheelchair itself is a service under either act, because it is necessary to accommodate 

his paraplegia, but IDOC provided Wagoner with a new 

wheelchair before he filed his grievance about the backrest. 

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IV

In closing, we stress that it is better practice to hold a

Pavey hearing separate from and before considering a motion for summary judgment. Nonetheless, although the 

judge did not do so here, we find no reversible error. In addition, the court correctly concluded that no material facts 

were disputed and that the Commissioner and IDOC were 

entitled to judgment as a matter of law. We therefore AFFIRM

the judgment of the district court.

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