Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-21-35374/USCOURTS-ca9-21-35374-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Jay Christensen
Appellee
Craig
Appellee
D. W. Dietz
Appellee
Frahs
Appellee
D.W. McKay
Appellee
Shawn Sheltra
Appellant
Taylor
Appellee

Document Text:

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

SHAWN SHELTRA, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

 v. 

JAY CHRISTENSEN, Warden; D.W. 

MCKAY; D. W. DIETZ; TAYLOR, 

Sgt.; FRAHS, Cpl.; CRAIG, C/O, 

Defendants-Appellees.

No. 21-35374 

D.C. No. 1:20-cv00215-DCN 

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Idaho

David C. Nye, Chief District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted May 8, 2024

Pasadena, California

Filed December 31, 2024

Before: Richard C. Tallman, Danielle J. Forrest, and 

Patrick J. Bumatay, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Forrest;

Dissent by Judge Bumatay

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2 SHELTRA V. CHRISTENSEN

SUMMARY*

Prisoner Civil Rights/Exhaustion of Administrative 

Remedies

The panel reversed the district court’s grant of summary 

judgment for Idaho prison officials based on Idaho 

Department of Corrections inmate Shawn Sheltra’s failure to 

exhaust his administrative remedies, and affirmed the district 

court’s grant of summary judgment for defendants as to 

Sheltra’s claims brought against defendants in their official 

capacity.

Sheltra filed a formal grievance in March identifying 

safety concerns from other inmates in his housing unit, 

including that he would be attacked in April if he did not 

make a demanded extortion payment. After being shortly 

isolated, Sheltra was returned to his housing unit, and in 

April, he was attacked by another inmate. Sheltra filed suit 

thereafter, asserting violations of the Eighth and Fourteenth 

Amendments based on defendants’ failure to protect him 

from a known harm. The district court dismissed the action 

for failure to exhaust administrative remedies because 

Sheltra did not file a formal grievance after the April attack. 

The panel adopted the continuing-violations doctrine for 

purposes of administrative exhaustion under the Prison 

Litigation Reform Act (PLRA). Under the doctrine, a 

properly exhausted prison grievance asserting one 

continuing harm or a single course of conduct can exhaust 

events arising out of the same alleged violation that occur 

* This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has 

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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SHELTRA V. CHRISTENSEN 3

after the grievance was made. The panel joined sister 

circuits who have held that an inmate need not file repeated 

grievances if the inmate has identified one continuing harm 

or a single course of conduct of which later events are a 

part. The doctrine applied here because Sheltra’s attack was 

part of the same continuing harm or course of conduct that 

he described in his prison grievance before the attack. The 

panel, therefore, reversed the district court’s summary 

judgment on Sheltra’s individual-capacity claims against 

defendants. 

The panel affirmed the district court’s grant of summary 

judgment for defendants on Sheltra’s official-capacity 

claims because, as Sheltra conceded, these claims are barred 

by the Eleventh Amendment.

Dissenting, Judge Bumatay wrote that although he 

agreed with the majority that the continuing violation 

doctrine could apply to PLRA exhaustion, it did not apply in 

this case. The continuing violation doctrine only applies to 

longstanding prison policies or conditions and recurring 

incidents of the same harm. It has never meant that one 

incident automatically satisfies exhaustion for any future 

related claims. Had Sheltra filed a grievance after the attack, 

the substance of that grievance would have been markedly 

different than his earlier submissions. But because Sheltra 

filed suit before filing another grievance, he deprived 

officials of the time and opportunity to address his 

attack. He, therefore, could not avail himself of the 

continuing violation doctrine.

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4 SHELTRA V. CHRISTENSEN

COUNSEL

Aaron Littman (argued), UCLA School of Law, Prisoners' 

Rights Clinic, Los Angeles, California, for PlaintiffAppellant. 

Aaron M. Green (argued), Deputy Attorney General; James 

E.M. Craig, Chief, Civil Litigation and Constitutional 

Defense; Joshua N. Turner, Acting Deputy Solicitor 

General; Raul R. Labrador, Attorney General; Office of the 

Attorney General, Boise, Idaho; for Defendants-Appellees.

OPINION

FORREST, Circuit Judge: 

The question presented is whether Plaintiff-Appellant 

Shawn Sheltra, an inmate with the Idaho Department of 

Corrections (IDOC), administratively exhausted his failureto-protect claim asserted against prison officials Jay 

Christensen, David Dietz, Travis Taylor, and Benjamin 

Frahs (Defendants) as required by the Prison Litigation 

Reform Act (PLRA). The answer to this question depends 

on whether we adopt the continuing-violations doctrine as 

applied to the PLRA’s administrative-exhaustion 

requirement and whether the continuing-violations doctrine

applies to Sheltra’s case. If the doctrine applies, Sheltra’s 

complaints to prison officials about threats that he received

before he was attacked exhausted his failure-to-protect

claim. If the doctrine does not apply, then Sheltra did not 

exhaust the claim presented here because he did not 

separately grieve the attack. 

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SHELTRA V. CHRISTENSEN 5

We adopt the continuing-violations doctrine for PLRA 

administrative exhaustion purposes and conclude that it

applies here because Sheltra’s attack was part of the same 

continuing harm or course of conduct that he described in his 

prison grievance before the attack. In doing so, we join our 

sister circuits who have held that an inmate need not file 

repeated grievances if the inmate has identified one 

continuing harm or a single course of conduct of which later 

events are a part. See Morgan v. Trierweiler, 67 F.4th 362, 

369–70 (6th Cir. 2023) (identifying Fifth and Sixth Circuit 

cases applying the continuing-violations doctrine in the 

PLRA context, as well as numerous district court cases); 

Turley v. Rednour, 729 F.3d 645, 650 (7th Cir. 2013) (citing 

Fifth, Sixth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuit cases applying the 

continuing-violations doctrine in the PLRA context). Thus, 

we reverse the district court’s grant of summary judgment 

for Defendants based on Sheltra’s failure to exhaust his 

administrative remedies, as required by the PLRA. But we 

affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment for 

Defendants as to Sheltra’s official-capacity claims because 

these claims are barred by the Eleventh Amendment. 

I. BACKGROUND

A. IDOC’s Grievance Procedures

When an inmate has a problem that affects himself or the 

inmate population generally, IDOC’s grievance and 

informal resolution process requires that the inmate first try 

to resolve the problem by talking with a prison staff member. 

If this does not resolve the inmate’s problem, the inmate may 

submit an Offender Concern Form. Where the prison’s

response to this form does not resolve the problem, or where 

the prison does not respond within seven days, the inmate 

may submit a formal Grievance Form within 30 days of the 

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6 SHELTRA V. CHRISTENSEN

incident or another Offender Concern Form. The Grievance 

Form must document the inmate’s informal efforts to resolve 

the problem, raise only one issue, and suggest a solution to 

the problem raised. An inmate may also appeal an 

unsatisfactory response to his grievance. Once a prisoner has 

administratively appealed his unsatisfactory grievance 

response and received a decision, he has administratively 

exhausted the IDOC grievance process as required by the 

PLRA.

Once an inmate exhausts this grievance process, IDOC’s 

policy bars him from submitting another grievance 

addressing the same issue. There are limited exceptions to 

this bar, including “[w]hen a specific issue was not 

addressed in a previous grievance even though the issue was 

based on the same incident.” 

B. Sheltra’s Exhaustion Efforts

On February 14, 2020, Sheltra was placed in housing 

unit D-1. That same day, he submitted three Offender 

Concern Forms. The first one was sent to Deputy Warden 

McKay and stated that: (1) an inmate who had previously 

threatened Sheltra was housed in D-1; (2) Sheltra had been 

assaulted the previous day; and (3) Sheltra worried that he 

would be attacked again because he was a medium-security 

inmate being placed with maximum-security offenders 

(Concern Form 1). The second form was sent to the shift 

command and stated that Sheltra had been warned of an 

impending attack by inmate Young (Concern Form 2). The 

third form was sent to Defendant Taylor, reminding him that 

Sheltra had communicated his security concerns before

being placed back in unit D-1 and warning Taylor that if an 

inmate attacked Sheltra, it would be due to prison officials’ 

failure to protect him (Concern Form 3).

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SHELTRA V. CHRISTENSEN 7

Three days later, on February 17, Sheltra sent a fourth 

Offender Concern Form to Defendant Frahs stating that 

someone told Sheltra that inmate Young and others were 

“coming down,” which Sheltra asserted proved his previous 

statement that Young came to Sheltra’s cell on February 14

(Concern Form 4). On February 18, Defendant Taylor 

responded to Concern Forms 2 and 3, telling Sheltra that 

there were no documented safety concerns and suggesting 

that Sheltra contact Investigations if he felt unsafe. 

Sheltra sent a fifth Offender Concern Form on February 

20 to Defendant Frahs (Concern Form 5). He asserted that 

Frahs was failing in his duty to keep Sheltra safe, that Sheltra 

had reported he was being extorted, and that Frahs should 

report the extortion. On February 21, Deputy Warden 

McKay responded to Concern Form 1, advising Sheltra to 

contact Security if he wanted to be moved. On February 25, 

Frahs responded to Concern Forms 4 and 5, stating that he 

had relayed Sheltra’s concerns to Investigations.

Unsatisfied with Defendants’ responses, Sheltra filed a 

formal grievance on March 10. He identified “two safety 

concerns on D-1”—threats and extortion—and explained 

that he was threatened his first day on D-1 and had already

been forced to pay $30.00 in extortion. As his proposed 

solution, Sheltra requested to be moved back to D-2, which 

is a medium-security housing unit. Sheltra’s grievance was 

denied because he had “no active safety concerns with any 

inmates” and because other misbehavior did not warrant him 

being placed in D-2. One reviewing official also accused 

Sheltra of “attempting to manipulate housing in order to be 

housed around another offender that [he was] romantically 

involved with.” 

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8 SHELTRA V. CHRISTENSEN

On March 31, Sheltra appealed his formal grievance 

denial, asserting that Young and two other named inmates 

threatened that if he did not make a demanded extortion 

payment by April 10, he would be attacked. Warden 

Christensen responded to his appeal on April 2, accusing 

Sheltra of launching an extortion ring with other inmates and 

advising Sheltra that he would be “isolated for the course of 

[the] investigation” into the extortion scheme. But after a

short period in isolation, Sheltra was returned to housing unit 

D-1. And on April 17, he was attacked by another inmate. 

Sheltra claims his attacker was paid by an inmate that he 

identified in his grievance. Sheltra was beaten so severely 

that his one good eye was swollen shut for several weeks, 

rendering him blind (Sheltra’s other eye previously had been 

surgically removed). Even after the swelling subsided, 

Sheltra’s vision remains permanently impaired. He also 

alleges that he suffers from headaches, severe neck pain, and 

mental issues caused by the attack.

Over three months later, Sheltra submitted an Offender 

Concern Form asking for permission to submit an untimely 

grievance related to the April attack, but his request was 

summarily denied.

C. District Court Proceedings

Approximately two weeks after the April attack, Sheltra 

filed a lawsuit pro se in federal district court. His operative 

complaint asserts violations of the Eighth and Fourteenth 

Amendments based on Defendants’ failure to protect him 

“from a known harm.” Specifically, Sheltra alleges that he 

“filed a Grievance before the 4/17/2020 assault, alerting the 

named Defendants that the assault was going to happen,” and 

“they did nothing to prevent it from happening.”

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SHELTRA V. CHRISTENSEN 9

Defendants characterized Sheltra’s claim as related only 

to the April attack, and they moved for summary judgment,

arguing that Sheltra failed to exhaust his administrative 

remedies because he did not file a grievance after the April 

attack. Sheltra countered that his claim was not based solely 

on his April attack but on Defendants’ failure to protect him 

from an ongoing threat that he identified in his pre-attack 

grievance. He also noted that prison policy barred him from 

grieving the same problem multiple times.

The district court accepted Defendants’ characterization 

of Sheltra’s claim, and, relying on Perry v. Dickinson, No. 

2:10-cv-3223 KJN P, 2012 WL 2559426 (E.D. Cal. June 29, 

2012), it rejected Sheltra’s argument that his March 

grievance exhausted his administrative remedies for the 

April attack. Specifically, the district court concluded that

because Sheltra sued for “an attack that happened after he 

filed his grievance,” per IDOC policy, he could only exhaust 

his administrative remedies by submitting another grievance 

within 30 days after the attack.

The district court also rejected Sheltra’s three alternative 

arguments. First, it concluded that Sheltra would not have 

been barred from grieving the April attack because that event 

was not the subject of his prior grievance, which discussed 

threats of attack and extortion. Second, it rejected Sheltra’s 

“post-hoc” argument that he should have been allowed to 

grieve the April attack beyond the 30-day deadline because 

the attack impaired his vision, noting that when Sheltra 

asked for the extension, he only mentioned a safety concern. 

And third, it rejected Sheltra’s argument that IDOC policy 

does not allow grievances for a failure-to-protect claim. The 

district court dismissed Sheltra’s lawsuit without prejudice 

for “fail[ure] to properly exhaust his available administrative 

remedies regarding the April 17, 2020 attack prior to filing 

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10 SHELTRA V. CHRISTENSEN

[his] suit.” The court declined to address Defendants’ 

Eleventh Amendment challenge to Sheltra’s officialcapacity claims. 

Sheltra moved for reconsideration, emphasizing that 

Defendants and the district court had mischaracterized the 

basis of his claim. The district court denied his motion, and 

Sheltra appealed.

II. DISCUSSION

We review de novo the grant of summary judgment for 

prison officials based on an inmate’s failure to exhaust his 

administrative remedies as required by the PLRA. Fordley 

v. Lizarraga, 18 F.4th 344, 350 (9th Cir. 2021).

Sheltra argues that he fully exhausted his failure-toprotect claim through his March grievance and earlier 

informal complaints. Specifically, he contends that he was 

not required to grieve the April attack because Defendants

violated his Eighth Amendment rights when they failed to 

protect him once they were on notice that they had placed 

him in conditions that exposed him to substantial harm.

Citing Wilk v. Neven, 956 F.3d 1143, 1146–50 (9th Cir. 

2020), he argues that any ensuing harm, including the April 

attack, is simply evidence confirming the substantial risk of 

serious harm Sheltra warned officials he faced. He also urges 

us to adopt the continuing-violations doctrine as applied to 

the PLRA administrative-exhaustion requirement, in 

alignment with many of our sister circuits.

Defendants disagree, asserting that Sheltra’s March 

grievance could not have exhausted his claim asserted in this 

lawsuit because he seeks damages for an attack that occurred 

after his grievance was resolved. Citing Ngo v. Woodford, 

539 F.3d 1108, 1009–11 (9th Cir. 2008), Defendants further 

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SHELTRA V. CHRISTENSEN 11

contend that we have held the continuing-violations doctrine

does not apply in cases subject to the PLRA.

A. Failure-to-Protect Claims

A prison official’s failure “to protect prisoners from 

violence at the hands of other prisoners” violates the Eighth 

Amendment when two requirements are met. Farmer v. 

Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 833–34 (1994). First, the risk the 

inmate is facing “must be, objectively, sufficiently serious.”

Id. at 834 (internal quotation omitted). Second, prison 

officials must act with “deliberate indifference to inmate 

health or safety,” meaning that they have subjective 

knowledge that the inmate faces “a substantial risk of serious 

harm.” Id. at 834, 837 (internal quotation omitted). This

second requirement can be established based on a known 

threat of harm. See Helling v. McKinney, 509 U.S. 25, 33–

34 (1993); see also, Farmer, 511 U.S. at 834 (“For a claim 

(like the one here) based on a failure to prevent harm, the 

inmate must show that he is incarcerated under conditions 

posing a substantial risk of serious harm.”). 

Although the Supreme Court has expressly declined to 

decide at what point a threat of attack violates the Eighth 

Amendment, Farmer, 511 U.S. at 834 n.3, we have held that 

explicit threats made against a particular inmate that are 

reported to prison officials trigger a duty to protect. See, e.g., 

Wilk, 956 F.3d at 1149–50 (holding that a threat against an 

inmate created a “substantial risk of serious harm” to the 

inmate, and “prison officials must ‘take reasonable measures 

to mitigate the [known] substantial risk[s]’ to a prisoner.”) 

(quoting Castro v. County of Los Angeles, 833 F.3d 1060, 

1067 (9th Cir. 2016)); Cortez v. Skol, 776 F.3d 1046, 1049, 

1052 (9th Cir. 2015) (observing that a prison official showed

“deliberate indifference” by transporting inmates without 

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12 SHELTRA V. CHRISTENSEN

backup when he knew that one inmate was potentially in 

danger); Clem v. Lomeli, 566 F.3d 1177, 1181–82 (9th Cir. 

2009) (holding that a properly instructed jury could find that 

a prison official’s failure to respond to an inmate’s call for 

help constituted “deliberate indifference”); see also 

Rodriguez v. Sec’y for Dep’t of Corr., 508 F.3d 611, 617 

n.12 (11th Cir. 2007) (concluding that “gang-related threats 

made on [the inmate’s] life, which were explicitly reported 

to prison officials, present a substantial enough risk of harm 

to trigger a prison official’s Eighth Amendment duty to 

act.”); Odom v. S.C. Dep’t of Corr., 349 F.3d 765, 767, 770–

71 (4th Cir. 2003) (concluding that an inmate’s Eighth 

Amendment claim survived summary judgment where an 

inmate-on-inmate attack resulting in “significant physical 

injury” was preceded by death threats and the officers were 

“aware of the risk of harm and simply ignored it”). 

B. Exhaustion of Administrative Remedies

1.

The PLRA requires inmates to exhaust administrative 

remedies before filing suit: “No action shall be brought with 

respect to prison conditions . . . by a prisoner confined in any 

jail, prison, or other correctional facility until such 

administrative remedies as are available are exhausted.” 42 

U.S.C. § 1997e(a); see also Woodford v. Ngo, 548 U.S. 81, 

90–91 (2006). The requirement that an inmate fully exhaust 

the administrative remedies made available both “give[s] the 

agency a fair and full opportunity to adjudicate [the 

complaint]” and “impos[es] some orderly structure on the 

course of [the prison’s] proceedings.” 548 U.S. at 90–91. 

The exhaustion requirement also “‘improv[es] litigation that 

does occur by leading to the preparation of a useful record.’” 

Fuqua v. Ryan, 890 F.3d 838, 844 (9th Cir. 2018) (quoting 

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SHELTRA V. CHRISTENSEN 13

Jones v. Bock, 549 U.S. 199, 219 (2007)). “Compliance with 

prison grievance procedures . . . is all that is required by the 

PLRA to ‘properly exhaust.’” Jones, 549 U.S. at 218.

As an initial matter, we reject Defendants’ assertion that 

Sheltra’s prison complaints could not have exhausted his 

Eighth Amendment claim because he could not have sought

money damages before the attack occurred. While the relief 

available to Sheltra before he was attacked may have been 

limited to nominal damages or injunctive relief, “a violation 

of the Eighth Amendment does not turn on the type [of] 

relief sought.” Benefield v. McDowall, 241 F.3d 1267, 1272 

(10th Cir. 2001); see also Carey v. Piphus, 435 U.S. 247, 

255 (1978) (analyzing separately whether a constitutional 

violation occurred and whether the violation caused 

compensable injury). 

The primary dispute regarding whether Sheltra properly 

exhausted his administrative remedies is whether his preattack grievance covers the attack or whether Sheltra was 

required to grieve that event separately. The resolution of 

this dispute hinges on the continuing-violations doctrine, 

and whether we choose to adopt it in the context of the 

PLRA’s administrative-exhaustion requirement. There are 

two applications of this doctrine discussed by the parties. 

First, courts have applied the continuing-violations doctrine

to extend filing deadlines under the reasoning that where a 

violation is ongoing, the limitations period begins anew each 

day the violation continues. See, e.g., Havens Realty Corp.

v. Coleman, 455 U.S. 363, 380–81 (1982) (when an 

“unlawful practice . . . continues into the limitations period,” 

the limitations period restarts after each “asserted occurrence 

of that practice.”). Second, courts have applied the 

continuing-violations doctrine in the context of exhaustion 

of administrative remedies under the PLRA to treat events 

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14 SHELTRA V. CHRISTENSEN

occurring after an inmate’s grievance as nonetheless 

exhausted when the later-occurring events are part of the 

single continuing harm or course of conduct that the inmate 

grieved. See, e.g., Morgan, 67 F.4th at 369–70.

Defendants are correct that we have rejected the 

deadline-extending application of the continuing-violations 

doctrine in the PLRA context. Ngo, 539 F.3d at 1109–10

(holding that the continuing-violations doctrine did not 

apply to restart the prisoner grievance limitations period 

when the inmate merely alleged continuing effects of the 

harmful conduct). But Defendants’ assertion that Sheltra’s 

invocation of the continuing-violations doctrine here must 

also necessarily fail is unpersuasive. Sheltra is advancing the 

second application of the continuing-violations doctrine: 

that his prison grievance administratively exhausted his 

claim seeking relief for a later-occurring attack because the 

attack was part of the same continuing harm or course of 

conduct that he previously grieved.

Several of our sister circuits have adopted the application 

of the continuing-violations doctrine that Sheltra advances

here. See Turley, 729 F.3d at 650 (citing Fifth, Sixth, Tenth,

and Eleventh Circuit cases discussing and applying the 

continuing-violations doctrine in the context of PLRA 

administrative exhaustion); Morgan, 67 F.4th at 369–70 

(identifying Fifth and Sixth Circuit cases applying the 

continuing-violations doctrine in the context of PLRA 

administrative exhaustion, as well as numerous district court

cases). Most recently, the Sixth Circuit held in a PLRA

administrative exhaustion case that “[w]here there is one,

continuing harm or a single course of conduct (which can 

lead to discrete incidents of harm), filing repeat grievances 

is unnecessary.” Id. (internal quotation omitted). 

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SHELTRA V. CHRISTENSEN 15

In Morgan, the plaintiff brought a First Amendment Free

Exercise claim, arguing that the defendants denied him Halal 

meals on an ongoing basis. Id. at 368. The plaintiff’s 

grievance listed a date range for when the claimed 

constitutional violation occurred, and his federal complaint 

alleged that prison officials continued to deny him Halal 

meals after the date range specified in his grievance. Id. The 

Sixth Circuit rejected the defendants’ argument that each 

meal denial was a discrete event that required a separate 

grievance. Id. at 370–71. Instead, recognizing that the nature 

of the plaintiff’s challenge was consistent over time and 

“reflect[ed] an attempt to resolve a single course of 

unconstitutional conduct,” the court held that the plaintiff’s 

grievance fully exhausted his Free Exercise claim, which 

included the allegedly unconstitutional conduct that 

occurred after he filed his grievance. Id. at 368, 370–71. The 

court explained that where the plaintiff grieved that he was 

continuously being denied religious meals, requiring him to 

grieve after every individual meal denial “would be an 

unwarranted expectation given that [his] allegations were 

broader than a single meal.” Id. at 370–71. To illuminate its 

reasoning, the court distinguished the plaintiff’s case from a

PLRA administrative exhaustion case involving the denial 

of inmate mail where the court declined to apply the 

continuing-violations doctrine because the inmate had not 

claimed “he had been denied mail consistently” but rather 

challenged “certain pieces of mail rejected under different 

facts and policies.” Id. at 370 (citing Siggers v. Campbell, 

652 F.3d 681 (6th Cir. 2011)). 

The Fifth Circuit relied on similar reasoning in Johnson

v. Johnson, 385 F.3d 503 (5th Cir. 2004), to apply the 

continuing-violations doctrine in the PLRA administrative 

exhaustion context. There, the inmate plaintiff was sexually 

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16 SHELTRA V. CHRISTENSEN

assaulted repeatedly over 18 months. Id. at 512–13. The 

plaintiff used the prison’s “formal two-step administrative 

grievance process on several occasions,” but officials denied

his requests to be placed in protected status or moved 

because “unit officials or [classification] committees had 

already conducted proper investigations and had found no 

substantiating evidence.” Id. at 513. The defendants argued 

that because the plaintiff had filed only a grievance alleging 

“near-constant sexual assault,” instead of filing a grievance 

after each incident, he failed to exhaust any claims related to 

his post-grievance assaults. Id. at 519. The Fifth Circuit

rejected this argument, concluding that the plaintiff’s 

grievance was “sufficient to exhaust claims that arose from 

the same continuing failure to protect him from sexual 

assault.” Id. at 521. It reasoned that “[i]t would make little 

sense to require” the plaintiff “to file repeated grievances 

reminding the prison officials that he remained subject to 

attack in the general population,” especially because prison 

policy prohibited repetitive grievances. Id.

In both Morgan and Johnson, as well as in other circuit

cases that have adopted Sheltra’s proposed application of the 

continuing-violations doctrine, the courts applied the 

doctrine even though prison officials investigated the

violations the inmates initially grieved. This is because the 

crucial question in evaluating the merits of a continuing 

Eighth Amendment violation is not whether prison officials 

ever performed an investigation into the inmate’s grieved 

violation, but whether prison officials were aware that the 

complaining inmate faced a substantial risk of harm and 

acted unreasonably despite such knowledge. See Wilk, 956 

F.3d at 1148–49 (“Once an official is subjectively aware of 

a substantial risk of harm, . . . the official [must] take 

reasonable measures to mitigate the substantial risk.”) see 

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SHELTRA V. CHRISTENSEN 17

also, e.g., Morgan, 67 F.4th at 364–65, 370–71; Johnson, 

385 F.3d at 516, 520; Howard v. Waide, 534 F.3d 1227, 

1239–40 (10th Cir. 2008) (applying the continuingviolations doctrine where inmate who filed multiple 

grievances about assaults that were previously investigated 

by prison officials established that prison officials had 

objective and subjective knowledge of a substantial risk of 

harm and acted unreasonably).

These cases are persuasive, and we now hold that under 

the continuing-violations doctrine, a properly exhausted 

prison grievance asserting “one, continuing harm or a single 

course of conduct” can exhaust events arising out of the 

same alleged violation that occur after the grievance was 

made. Morgan, 67 F.4th at 369–70 (internal quotation 

omitted). We now turn to whether this doctrine applies in 

Sheltra’s case. 

2.

Sheltra’s February informal prison complaints stated, 

among other things, that he was threatened the first day that 

he was returned to unit D-1, that inmate Young came to his 

cell and threatened to fight, that another inmate came to his 

cell stating that inmates associated with Young were 

coming, and that prison officials had failed to respond to his 

safety concerns and were failing to protect him. His formal 

grievance filed in March expressed “two safety concerns”—

threats and extortion. He explained that he was “put on a 

walk with an offender who [he] named on [his] debrief 

papers” and that he was threatened by two inmates on his 

first day in D-1. And he asserted that officials were refusing 

to protect him and he needed to be moved. In his appeal of

the denial of his grievance, Sheltra named three inmates who 

were threatening him and claimed he feared that if he did not 

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18 SHELTRA V. CHRISTENSEN

pay their extortion demand by April 10, he would be 

attacked. 

Under these circumstances, we conclude that Sheltra 

grieved a continuing harm or single course of conduct—

prison officials failing to protect him from a specifically 

identified threat posed by inmates in his housing unit. While 

he referenced some discrete events and interactions in his 

inmate complaints, taken in context, they all related to a 

singular ongoing risk of harm. And his post-grievance attack 

likewise related to the same continuing harm that he 

previously grieved. After Sheltra was returned to unit D-1 

from isolation, he was brutally attacked on April 17 by an 

inmate who he claims was paid by one of the inmates he 

identified in his grievance process as having threatened him. 

Contrary to Defendants’ assertion, Sheltra’s failure to name 

his ultimate attacker in his grievance does not mean that his 

attack was independent of the threats that he previously 

grieved. Cf. Farmer, 511 U.S. 843 (prison officials may not 

“escape liability for deliberate indifference by showing that 

. . . [they] did not know that the complainant was especially 

likely to be assaulted by the specific prisoner who eventually 

committed the assault.”); Howard, 534 F.3d at 1240 (“[The 

inmate] is certainly not required to give notice of who 

precisely is behind the threat.”). 

We find unpersuasive Defendants’ and the dissent’s 

efforts to distinguish the cases in other circuits applying the 

continuing-violations doctrine to post-grievance events. For 

example, Defendants contend that Johnson is inapplicable 

because the prison in that case prohibited repetitive 

grievances and IDOC permits such grievances in some 

circumstances. And the dissent contends that Johnson is 

distinguishable because there the inmate grieved some of the 

“near-constant” assaults that he suffered, 385 F.3d at 519, 

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SHELTRA V. CHRISTENSEN 19

but here Sheltra grieved only threats, not his assault. These 

arguments ignore the crux of Johnson’s holding as it relates 

to Sheltra’s theory of liability. 

In Johnson, the Fifth Circuit held that the inmate’s 

grievances of some of the assaults he suffered were 

sufficient to cover subsequent physical and sexual assaults 

because “the same condition of confinement of which he had 

been complaining continued” and prison officials had notice 

of the problem. Id. at 519–20, 23. The same is true here. 

Sheltra’s claim is that prison officials were made aware of 

the threats that he faced in his housing unit through his 

informal complaints and formal grievance and that the

Defendants failed to protect him from those threats, as 

evidenced by the assault that he suffered allegedly at the 

hands of those that he had identified as threatening him. 

Contrary to the dissent’s suggestion, the assault did not 

present a new problem or condition that the Defendants were 

not given an opportunity to address. For this same reason, 

the dissent’s discussion of Siggers and Moore v. Bennette, 

517 F.3d 717 (4th Cir. 2008), is unpersuasive because both 

of those cases clearly involved inmates raising similar but 

different problems—the rejection of mail for different 

reasons under different prison policies and inadequate 

medical care related to different conditions.

1 Moore, for 

example, involved separate complaints about Hepatitis C 

and gout; under the dissent’s logic, though, the continuingviolations doctrine would not apply when a prisoner’s 

1

The dissent’s concern that we have not identified how Defendants acted 

unreasonably in responding to Sheltra’s report of threats is misplaced. 

This is the focus of the merits analysis of an Eighth Amendment failureto-protect claim, not whether an inmate has exhausted his Eighth 

Amendment claim, which is the question we must decide in this appeal.

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20 SHELTRA V. CHRISTENSEN

unheeded grievance for untreated stage 3 cancer predictably 

allows the disease to progress to stage 4.

Defendants and the dissent also attempt to distinguish 

Parzyck v. Prison Health Servs., Inc., 627 F.3d 1215 (11th 

Cir. 2010). In that case, the plaintiff alleged that a prison 

doctor violated the Eighth Amendment by not ensuring that 

the plaintiff received a consultation with an orthopedic 

specialist, as recommended by other prison medical 

professionals. Id. at 1217. Defendants argue that Parzyck

“rests on the principle that an offender need not identify 

specific staff members in a grievance before naming them as 

Defendants.” While Parzyck does establish this principle, it 

also applied the continuing-violations doctrine, concluding 

that the plaintiff “was not required to initiate another round 

of the administrative grievance process on the exact same 

issue each time another request for an orthopedic 

consultation was denied.” 627 F.3d at 1219. The dissent also 

tries to distinguish Parzyck, as involving repeated incidents 

happening over a length of time. However, the Tenth Circuit 

also highlighted that the plaintiff was not required to file a 

new grievance to address “every subsequent act . . . that 

contributes to the continuation of a problem already raised 

in an earlier grievance.” Id. As we explained above, Sheltra’s 

attack was allegedly a “continuation of a problem” that he 

had already grieved, making Parzyck’s reasoning applicable 

here. 

In sum, Sheltra is not asserting in this case a new harm 

or course of conduct from that which was the subject of his 

prison complaints. Thus, we conclude that the continuingviolations doctrine applies and his March grievance process 

administratively exhausted his April attack. There would be 

little value in requiring Sheltra to separately grieve every 

new interaction or event related to the ongoing threats that 

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SHELTRA V. CHRISTENSEN 21

he had already grieved because the purposes of exhaustion 

were satisfied. Defendants were made aware of the risk of 

harm that Sheltra claimed he faced and his contention that 

prison officials were failing to protect him, and they had a 

full opportunity, under the procedures adopted by the prison, 

to address Sheltra’s concerns before this litigation was filed. 

See Woodford, 548 U.S. at 89. Sheltra’s informal and formal 

complaints also created a record to aid the litigation of his 

claim. See Fuqua, 890 F.3d at 844. 

C. Eleventh Amendment Immunity

Sheltra concedes that the Eleventh Amendment 

mandates dismissal of his official-capacity claims asserted 

against Defendants. We affirm the district court’s grant of 

summary judgment in favor of Defendants on those claims.

III. CONCLUSION

Because the district court did not have the benefit of our 

new rule applying the continuing-violations doctrine on 

these facts, the district court’s grant of summary judgment is 

REVERSED IN PART as to Sheltra’s individual-capacity 

claims and AFFIRMED IN PART as to Sheltra’s officialcapacity claims asserted against Defendants, and this case is 

REMANDED for further proceedings consistent with this 

opinion.2

2 Defendants shall bear costs on appeal. 

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22 SHELTRA V. CHRISTENSEN

BUMATAY, Circuit Judge, dissenting:

A prisoner is not exempted from the exhaustion 

requirements of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (“PLRA”) 

just because he filed an earlier grievance that relates to a later 

incident. More is required. The PLRA demands officials be 

afforded “time and opportunity to address complaints 

internally” before an inmate runs to court. Porter v. Nussle, 

534 U.S. 516, 524–25 (2002). That requirement means “[n]o 

action shall be brought with respect to prison conditions 

. . . until such administrative remedies as are available are 

exhausted.” Brown v. Valoff, 422 F.3d 926, 934 (9th Cir. 

2005) (quoting 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a)). So when a prison 

reasonably investigates a prisoner’s grievance and reaches a 

conclusion—even if it gets the problem wrong, the prisoner 

must file a separate grievance for a later incident.

Of course, some circuits have rightfully recognized an 

exception to this exhaustion requirement when a prisoner 

complains of a “continuing violation.” See, e.g., Morgan v. 

Trierweiler, 67 F.4th 362, 370 (6th Cir. 2023) (simplified). 

In those cases, a prisoner need not continue exhausting 

administrative remedies when an earlier grievance provides 

“prison administration with notice of, and an opportunity to 

resolve, the same problem.” Johnson v. Killian, 680 F.3d 

234, 238–39 (2d Cir. 2012). Typically, these exceptions 

relate to ongoing prison policies or recurring incidents, so 

requiring a grievance after every incident makes less sense. 

That’s not the case here. Shawn Sheltra filed a single 

grievance and appeal listing concerns about threats and 

extortion. Officials at the Idaho Department of Corrections 

(“IDOC”) investigated those very threats. They removed 

Sheltra from his cell, investigated the allegations of 

extortion, and concluded—based on the evidence—that 

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SHELTRA V. CHRISTENSEN 23

Sheltra was a part of the extortion ring. After the 

investigation, Sheltra was attacked. He claims one of the 

three individuals he named in his grievance paid for the 

attack. But the earlier grievance didn’t permit IDOC to 

address and investigate the later attack. IDOC officials 

investigated the threats of extortion and assessed Sheltra 

wasn’t facing any safety issues—it seems they got that 

wrong. But that doesn’t undo the PLRA’s exhaustion 

requirement for Sheltra. So while I agree with the majority 

that the continuing violation doctrine could apply to PLRA 

exhaustion, it doesn’t apply here. 

Because the majority mistakenly applies the continuing 

violation doctrine, I respectfully dissent. 

I.

Shawn Sheltra filed a grievance on March 10, 2020, 

listing “two safety concerns”—“threats and extortion.” As a 

Level 1 response, an IDOC official stated that Sheltra would 

not be moved from his current housing because his behavior 

was “not acceptable on a medium custody tier.” At Level 2, 

another IDOC official responded that Sheltra’s current 

housing was “appropriate based off of [his] consistent 

behavioral issues” and that it appeared Sheltra was 

“manipulat[ing] housing” to be located closer to a prisoner 

he was romantically involved with. On March 31, Sheltra 

appealed those responses and gave the names “Walton, 

Young, now Willard” as prisoners extorting him. He 

claimed that if he didn’t pay them, they would attack or rape 

him. At Level 3, an IDOC official acknowledged that—

based on “complaints from the public and others victimized 

in this extortion ring”—Sheltra was being investigated as 

part of an extortion scheme and would be isolated during that 

investigation.

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24 SHELTRA V. CHRISTENSEN

On April 17, Sheltra was attacked by an unnamed 

prisoner who he claims was paid by one of the prisoners who 

threatened him. He never filed a grievance after the attack. 

Instead, he filed a complaint in federal court on April 30, 

2020.

II.

A.

Under the PLRA, a prisoner must exhaust all available 

remedies before commencing a federal action. Woodford v. 

Ngo, 548 U.S. 81, 87–88 (2006). That’s because 

“[e]xhaustion gives an agency” the “opportunity to correct 

its own mistakes . . . before it is haled into federal court” and 

so “discourages disregard of the agency’s procedures.” Id.

at 89 (simplified). Substantively, “it is the prison’s 

requirements, and not the PLRA, that define the boundaries 

of proper exhaustion.” Jones v. Bock, 549 U.S. 199, 218 

(2007). 

Sheltra didn’t file a grievance within 30 days following 

the attack, as IDOC policy required. So he relies on the 

before-the-attack grievance to suffice for exhaustion of 

IDOC’s administrative remedies. In other words, Sheltra 

asks us to apply the continuing violation doctrine here to 

save his otherwise-barred claim. 

B.

So far, seven circuits have applied the continuing 

violation doctrine to PLRA exhaustion when an earlier 

grievance gave officials notice and opportunity to correct a 

prisoner’s problem. Three of those cases involved 

grievances concerning prison policies or longstanding 

conditions. See Wilcox v. Brown, 877 F.3d 161, 167 n.4 (4th 

Cir. 2017) (continued rejection of Rastafarian services over 

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SHELTRA V. CHRISTENSEN 25

three months); Turley v. Rednour, 729 F.3d 645, 650 (7th 

Cir. 2013) (prison lockdown policy in place for over two 

years); Johnson, 680 F.3d at 238–39 (congregational prayer 

policy challenged for two years).

The other four cases involved repeated incidents 

happening over a length of time. See Morgan, 67 F.4th at 

369–71 (daily denial of Halal meals for three months); 

Parzyck v. Prison Health Servs., Inc., 627 F.3d 1215, 1218–

19 (11th Cir. 2010) (continued denial of orthopedic 

consultations over seven months); Howard v. Waide, 534 

F.3d 1227, 1244–45 (10th Cir. 2008) (continued attacks 

from same prison gang for at least five months); Johnson v. 

Johnson, 385 F.3d 503, 519–21 (5th Cir. 2004) (continued 

failure to protect prisoner from “near-constant” sexual 

assault over eighteen months). 

Those cases stand for the unremarkable proposition that 

“[i]n order to exhaust their remedies, prisoners need not file 

multiple, successive grievances raising the same issue (such 

as prison conditions or policies) if the objectionable 

condition is continuing.” Turley, 729 F.3d at 650, see also 

Howard, 534 F.3d at 1244 (“[F]urther grievances 

complaining of the same living situation would have been 

redundant.”). But a prisoner only satisfies “the purpose of 

the exhaustion requirement” when “a prison has received 

notice of, and an opportunity to correct, a problem.” Turley, 

729 F.3d at 650. That is, grievances that “were not adequate 

to put prison officials on notice” of a problem “fail[ed] to 

meet [the] PLRA’s exhaustion requirement.” Howard, 534 

F.3d at 1245 (rejecting related claims because they failed to 

provide officials with notice of problem). 

Johnson makes clear that grieving a single incident 

doesn’t exhaust all future related claims. “[W]e do not here 

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26 SHELTRA V. CHRISTENSEN

hold that a grievance filed in response to one particular 

incident automatically exhausts claims that arise from future 

incidents of the same general type.” Johnson, 385 F.3d at 

521 n.13. That meant “an inmate who claim[ed] to have 

been beaten by guards (or . . . not protected by guards) once 

one month and again the next month can rightfully be 

expected to grieve both incidents.” Id. 

Instead, Johnson involved “a horrific series of events” 

and egregious failures of prison officials to protect the 

plaintiff. Id. at 512. There, the plaintiff suffered sexual 

assaults “virtually every day” for over eighteen months, yet 

prison officials continually refused to address this “nearconstant sexual assault.” Id. at 519, 521. The plaintiff asked 

officials to place him in safekeeping status on at least seven 

occasions over that timeframe, but each was denied. Id. at 

513. Confronting those harrowing facts, the Fifth Circuit 

concluded that Johnson failed to file grievances within 

fifteen days of many incidents, as required under prison 

policy, but “[a]s a practical matter, Johnson could not have 

been expected to file a new grievance every fifteen days, or 

each time he was assaulted” when the problem occurred 

constantly. Id. at 521. The court dismissed Johnson’s other 

claims against two prison officials because his grievances 

“d[id] not . . . alert [prison officials] to, or give them an 

opportunity to remedy, the discrete conduct that form[ed] the 

basis of Johnson’s claims against the[] two officers, which 

[wa]s of a different character [than his other claims].” Id. at 

522. 

By that same logic, two circuits have declined to apply 

the doctrine to grievances involving separate incidents. See 

Siggers v. Campbell, 652 F.3d 681, 693 (6th Cir. 2011) (each 

rejection of mail occurred for separate reasons); Moore v. 

Bennette, 517 F.3d 717, 728–29 (4th Cir. 2008) (grievance 

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SHELTRA V. CHRISTENSEN 27

regarding inadequate care for Hep C insufficient for 

exhaustion regarding inadequate care for gout). Moore

refused to apply the doctrine when a prisoner “alleg[ed] a 

pattern of inadequate medical care[] [but] did not give prison 

officials a fair opportunity to address” the problem because 

he only complained about treatment for his pancreatic 

condition and Hepatitis C, not gout. Id. at 729. And Siggers

rejected the doctrine when a prisoner did not “complain[] of 

a single government failure . . . that occurred to the prisoner 

on a repeated basis due to that failure.” 652 F.3d at 693 

(distinguishing facts from Johnson, 385 F.3d at 519–21). 

Thus, the continuing violation doctrine only applies to 

longstanding prison policies or conditions and recurring 

incidents of the same harm. It has never meant that one 

incident automatically satisfies exhaustion for any future 

related claims. 

C.

With these rules in mind, we turn to Sheltra’s claim. He 

contends that one incident—threats and extortion—satisfies 

exhaustion for a future, related incident—the attack. But 

Johnson shows more is required. Sheltra’s March 10 

grievance provided no notice or opportunity for IDOC 

officials to remedy the problem of his attack. And he has not 

experienced a continuing harm such that officials were 

previously aware of a repeated problem. Thus, Sheltra’s 

claim falls outside the bounds of any court’s interpretation 

of the continuing violation doctrine. 

Each case applying the continuing violation doctrine 

found that filing another grievance would’ve been 

“redundant” because officials already knew about the 

problem. See, e.g., Howard, 534 F.3d at 1244. Not so here. 

Had Sheltra filed a grievance after the attack, the substance 

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28 SHELTRA V. CHRISTENSEN

of that grievance would have been markedly different than 

his earlier submissions. Consider what a subsequent 

grievance would contain. It would have actual details of the 

attack, the name of the attacker, and any connection to other 

prisoners previously named. And it also would likely 

include criticism of the prison’s allegedly faulty 

investigation—which found Sheltra complicit in the 

extortion ring and ignored any danger to him. A fresh, postgrievance investigation into those allegations “might [have]

improve[d] prison administration and satisf[ied] the inmate” 

thus “obviating the need for [this] litigation” as “Congress 

expected.” Brown, 422 F.3d at 936 (discussing purpose of 

PLRA) (simplified). But because Sheltra ran to federal 

court before filing another grievance, IDOC officials had no 

opportunity to investigate the attack or inspect the results of 

the previous investigation.

And Sheltra didn’t experience “one, continuing harm” 

like in other cases adopting the doctrine. Cf. Siggers, 652 

F.3d at 693. Those cases involved challenges to years-long 

policies, see, e.g., Johnson, 680 F.3d 238–39, or repeated 

incidents often occurring over months or years, see, e.g., 

Howard, 534 F.3d at 1244. Sheltra only complained of 

threats of extortion in March 2020 and experienced an attack 

assumedly related to those threats in April 2020. No case 

has adopted such an expansive view of “continuing harm” 

when the harm is that discrete and temporary.

The majority glosses over these distinctions because it 

accepts Sheltra’s argument that he experienced an ongoing 

harm—“prison officials failing to protect him from a 

specifically identified threat posed by inmates in his housing 

unit.” Maj. Op. 18. But that broad level of generality 

doesn’t fit with other cases applying the doctrine. See 

Johnson, 385 F.3d at 521 n.13. And the majority never 

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SHELTRA V. CHRISTENSEN 29

attempts to define what that continuing harm actually was. 

We ought to require more before adopting an exception to 

Congress’s design. 

The majority also misreads Johnson. Its import here is 

not the difference between threats and assaults. Maj. Op. 19. 

It’s that a prisoner’s grievance must “alert” officials to a 

problem and give them an “opportunity to remedy” that 

problem. Johnson, 385 F.3d at 522. That’s why an earlier 

grievance doesn’t “automatically” exhaust a later incident of 

the “same general type.” Id. at 521 n.13. If it doesn’t 

provide officials with notice and opportunity to fix a 

continuing problem, a single grievance can’t fit with the 

continuing violation doctrine. Id. at 522. Yet the majority 

skips over these requirements because it considers whether 

an investigation was conducted as a “merits” determination. 

But that distorts the entire purpose of exhaustion under the 

PLRA—to give a prison an “opportunity to correct its own 

mistakes . . . before it is haled into federal court.” Woodford, 

548 U.S. at 89. By ignoring the purpose of exhaustion and 

jumping past the facts in this case, the majority imposes 

some sort of strict liability on prisons under the PLRA—get 

every investigation right or else be prematurely haled to 

court. 

No court has ever used the doctrine to justify such a 

sweeping requirement, and we shouldn’t have done so today. 

* * *

Because Sheltra deprived IDOC officials of the time and 

opportunity to address his attack by failing to exhaust 

IDOC’s administrative remedies, he cannot avail himself of 

the continuing violation doctrine. 

I respectfully dissent. 

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