Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-24-02091/USCOURTS-ca7-24-02091-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Debra Gleason
Appellee
Scott Parks
Appellee
Aaron Templeton
Appellant

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted January 16, 2025*

Decided January 21, 2025 

Before

DIANE S. SYKES, Chief Judge

MICHAEL B. BRENNAN, Circuit Judge

CANDACE JACKSON-AKIWUMI, Circuit Judge

No. 24-2091 

AARON TEMPLETON,

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v. 

SCOTT PARKS and DEBRA GLEASON,

Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Western District of 

Wisconsin.

No. 23-cv-109-jdp

James D. Peterson, 

Chief Judge. 

O R D E R

Aaron Templeton alleges that in 2020, while he was detained at Marathon 

County Jail in Wausau, Wisconsin, jail officials housed him near a detainee who they 

knew had tuberculosis. Three months after he was transferred to another facility, he 

was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Following this diagnosis, Templeton filed a grievance 

* We have agreed to decide the case without oral argument because the briefs and 

record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would not 

significantly aid the court. FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C).

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with FED. R. APP. P. 32.1

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No. 24-2091 Page 2 

against the jail officials, leading to this suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for a violation of his 

Fourteenth Amendment rights. The defendants moved for summary judgment, arguing 

that Templeton did not timely file his grievance and thus did not exhaust his 

administrative remedies. See 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a). After an evidentiary hearing, see Pavey 

v. Conley, 544 F.3d 739 (7th Cir. 2008), the district judge entered summary judgment for 

the defendants, reasoning that the grievance was untimely. But because the defendants 

denied the grievance on the merits, a defense of exhaustion based on the grievance’s 

untimeliness is not available to the defendants; therefore we vacate and remand. 

The relevant facts regarding exhaustion are not in dispute. Upon receiving his 

diagnosis of tuberculosis three months after moving to another facility in 2021, 

Templeton attempted to file two grievances. First, within 14 days of the diagnosis, he 

sent a letter to the Marathon County Sheriff. The sheriff replied about five months later, 

stating that under the jail’s grievance policy, Templeton had to address his grievance to 

the jail administrator. Within days, Templeton filed a second grievance, this time to the 

jail administrator, who denied his grievance on the merits. She wrote that, based on her 

review of jail records, “housing a tuberculosis patient in general population while the

patient was contagious, or positive and undergoing treatment ... did not occur.”

Both the jail administrator and Templeton testified at the Pavey hearing. The 

administrator testified that detainees who are transferred to another facility but wish to 

file a grievance about the jail must send a grievance to the jail administrator—not the 

sheriff—within 14 days of the incident. Templeton’s first grievance was sent to the 

sheriff; the second grievance, although addressed to the administrator, was sent months 

after his diagnosis. In response, Templeton testified why he thought he had properly 

exhausted. He explained that the jail’s rules required him first to seek an informal 

resolution, which officers told him meant meeting with medical staff, but they were 

unable to see him before he was transferred. When he mailed his grievance to the 

sheriff, he did not have a copy of the jail’s rules, did not recall the proper recipient, and 

thought that the sheriff would promptly tell him of the proper recipient rather than 

delay several months before responding. 

Following the hearing, the judge entered summary judgment for the defendants. 

As relevant here, he ruled that, because Templeton’s attempt at informal resolution at 

the jail had “plainly failed,” he had to escalate the issue to a timely formal grievance, 

but his grievance to the jail administrator was untimely by many months. 

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On appeal, Templeton argues that the defendants waived the defense of 

untimely exhaustion because the jail rejected his grievance on the merits. This is an 

issue of law, which we review de novo. Maddox v. Love, 655 F.3d 709, 720 (7th Cir. 2011). 

The Prison Litigation Reform Act demands a prisoner’s “strict compliance” with

“each of the steps prescribed by the state’s administrative rules governing prison 

grievances” before filing suit. Williams v. Rajoli, 44 F.4th 1041, 1045 (7th Cir. 2022) 

(internal quotation marks omitted). But this strict compliance must be insisted upon by 

the jail itself: “[A] procedural shortcoming like failing to follow the prison’s time 

deadlines amounts to a failure to exhaust only if prison administrators explicitly relied 

on that shortcoming.” Maddox, 655 F.3d at 722 (quoting Conyers v. Abitz, 416 F.3d 580, 

585 (7th Cir. 2005)). If the jail instead rejects a grievance on the merits, “the grievance 

has served its function of alerting the state and inviting corrective action, and 

defendants cannot rely on the failure to exhaust defense.” Id.; see also Riccardo v. Rausch, 

375 F.3d 521, 524 (7th Cir. 2004) (“[W]hen a state treats a filing as timely and resolves it 

on the merits, the federal judiciary will not second-guess that action, for the grievance 

has served its function of alerting the state and inviting corrective action.”). 

The defendants argue that Templeton did not properly exhaust because his 

grievance to the jail administrator was untimely, but their conclusion is wrong. First, 

they insist that Templeton had to file his grievance within 14 days of when he was at 

risk of contracting tuberculosis (i.e., when he was housed with the infected patient at 

the jail in 2020) rather than after he was diagnosed in 2021. But this argument runs 

headfirst into our contrary holding in Turnage v. Dart, 16 F.4th 551 (7th Cir. 2021). We 

ruled that the “failure to file a grievance about the risk of injury” does not “permanently 

block[] any complaint about actual injury when the risk comes to pass.” Id. at 552. Thus, 

Templeton could wait until after he became sickened with tuberculosis to grieve. Id. 

Next, they argue that, because Templeton sent his grievance to the administrator 

months after his diagnosis—well outside the jail’s 14-day window—he did not exhaust

his administrative remedies. But his delay does not mean that Templeton failed to 

exhaust, because the jail administrator never “explicitly relied on that shortcoming” 

when denying his grievance. See Maddox, 655 F.3d at 722. Instead, the administrator 

rejected Templeton’s grievance on the merits: She stated that the jail’s records did not 

support Templeton’s claim that he was housed with a tuberculosis-infected patient, and 

she never mentioned untimeliness or any other procedural irregularity. Thus, the 

defendants have waived the asserted untimeliness of the grievance. See id. And because 

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untimeliness is the defendants’ only argument about a lack of exhaustion, they have not 

established their defense that Templeton failed to exhaust. See id.

We note that Templeton did not present in the district court the argument that he 

raises here (that the defendants considered his grievance on the merits and thus waived 

untimeliness), but this omission does not prevent him from successfully doing so on 

appeal. The defendants do not argue that Templeton may not now raise this argument, 

which he expressly presents on appeal. He writes that after he filed his grievance with

the jail administrator, “the issue [was] ruled on its merits by the jail administrator ... . [I 

appealed] that to the jail inspector and [got] an answer ... . [I] had fully exhausted a 

year before [I] filed suit. The PLRA suggests this waived any procedural object[ion]s if 

there were any.” The defendants’ failure to respond to this explicit argument on appeal 

is waiver. See, e.g., Bradley v. Village of University Park, 59 F.4th 887, 897 (7th Cir. 2023). 

But even if the defendants had contended on appeal that Templeton did not 

argue to the district judge that the administrator addressed his grievance on the merits, 

we would not prevent him from raising that argument now. In Maddox, the defendants 

also contended that a prisoner failed to preserve his appellate argument that they had 

considered on the merits his otherwise untimely grievance. See 655 F.3d at 721 n.6. We 

rejected that argument for two reasons. First, pro se litigants (like Templeton) are held 

to less exacting standards about formulating arguments than represented parties. 

Second, in opposing summary judgment, the prisoner (like Templeton) had argued that 

he exhausted his administrative remedies. That contention about exhaustion is enough 

to preserve the Maddox-style argument for appeal. See id. 

Thus, we VACATE the judgment and REMAND the case for further proceedings.

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