1 The HONORABLE JOHN A. JARVEY, United St ates District Judge for the Southern District of Iowa. 

## United States Court of Appeals FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________ No. 09-1912

___________ James Winn King, *
* Plaintiff - Appellant, * * Appeal from the United States v. * District Court for the * Southern District of Iowa. Iowa Department of Corrections, et al., *
* Defendants - Appellees. *

___________ Submitted: January 14, 2010 Filed: March 26, 2010

___________ Before LOKEN, Chief Judge, JOHN R. GIBSON and WOLLMAN, Circuit Judges.

___________ LOKEN, Chief Judge. James King, an inmate at the Newt on Correctional Facility (NCF), was a member of an inmate crew ordered to cl ean up effluents after a clogged toilet in one of the cells caused a floor drain in the common area to overflow. He filed multiple inmate grievances as a result of this inci dent and, some two m onths later, commenced this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 seeking m oney damages and court-ordered testing for diseases. The district court 1 dismissed the action, concluding that King failed to exhaust “such [prison] remedies as ar e available.” 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a). King-2- appeals. Reviewing the court’ s interpretation of § 1997e(a) de novo , we affirm. See Gibson v. Weber , 431 F.3d 339, 341 (8th Cir. 2005) (standard of review).

Section 1997e(a), as amended by the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1996, provides that “[n]o action shall be brought with respect to prison conditions under [§ 1983] by a prisoner confined in any jail, prison, or other correctional facility until such administrative remedies as are available are exhausted.” “Congress enacted § 1997e(a) to reduce the quantity and improv e the quality of prisoner suits; to this purpose, Congress afforded corrections officials time and opportunity to address complaints internally before allowing th e initiation of a federal case.” Porter v. Nussle , 534 U.S. 516, 524-25 (2002). Available grievance procedures must be exhausted even if the relief the inmateseeks under § 1983 was not available through those procedures. Booth v. Churner , 532 U.S. 731, 737-41 & n.6 (2001).

NCF follows a mandatory four-step grie vance procedure adopted by the State of Iowa Department of Corrections. See Policy No. IO-OR-06. An inmate must first seek to resolve the problem informally. If this fails, the inmate may file an Offender Grievance Complaint on a pres cribed form, stating the r eason for the grievance and the action requested. A grievance officer inve stigates the grievance and either replies to the inmate in writing or refers the matte r to a grievance committee. An inmate may appeal the Grievance Response by the grievan ce officer or grieva nce committee to the warden or superintendent, w ho must respond within fifteen days and state reasons for his decision. If the inmate remains dissatisfied, he may appeal to the Grievance Appeal Coordinator, who must ensure that there is a response to the appeal from the appropriate source within thirty days. The entire process “will not exceed 103 days unless extensions have been given.”

King’s first grievance complained that he was required to clean raw sewage for three-and-one-half hours, leaving him with burning eyes and a stomach ache. In the “Action Requested” part of the grievance form, King wrote, “Check Health; Improve-3- protocol on bio clean up.” Three weeks late r, a grievance officer issued a Grievance Response stating that King raised “valid issues” regarding training and protective equipment that would be reviewed with the prison’s Safety and Health Consultant, and suggesting that King “kite Health Services ” if he was experiencing medical issues. That same day, King filed a second grievance complaining th at he was not trained and should not have been ordered to perform “Bio hazard clean up.” The action King requested was, “to have officers follow blood and body fluid polic y on who is trained and who isn’t trained.” The Grievance Respons e ten days later stated, “This issue has been turned over to [the Iowa Occupational Safety and Health Bureau] for investigation. NCF will act on IOSHA recommendations.”

King did not appeal the grievance office r’s responses to his two grievances to the NCF warden, the third step in the prison’ s grievance process. The district court dismissed the § 1983 complaint because King did not exhaust “such . . . remedies as are available.” On appeal, King argues, as he did in the district court, that he exhausted available grievance proce dures because NCF’s Grievance Responses granted him the relief he requested at the second step in the process. Defendants respond that King failed to exhaust for two di stinct reasons, first, because he did not appeal either Grievance Res ponse to the warden, and sec ond, because neither of his grievances requested the damage relief he seeks in this lawsuit.

We agree with defendants’ first conten tion. King’s first grievance complained of burning eyes and a stomach ache. Th e grievance officer responded, “If you are experiencing any medical issues or symptoms you may choose to kite Health Services.” The Grievance Response form a dvised King of his right to appeal, but he did not do so. King’s § 1983 complaint requests two types of relief. First, he seeks an order that he be tested for “body fluid” and “blood born[e]” diseases. If this is a new grievance, it is complete ly unexhausted. If it is re lief encompassed by his first grievance, then its denial should have been appealed. In either case, he failed to exhaust this claim.2 Some other circuits have held that in mate grievances need not seek, and the inmate need not appeal the denial of, money damages that are not available through the grievance procedures, so long as thos e procedures are fully exhausted. See Rosa v. Littles , 336 F. App’x. 424, 428-29 (5th Cir. 2009); Thornton v. Snyder , 428 F.3d 690, 695-96 (7th Cir. 2005); Brown v. Valoff, 422 F.3d 926, 935-36 (9th Cir. 2005); Abney v. McGinnis , 380 F.3d 663, 667 (2d Cir. 2004) ; Ross v. County of Bernalillo , 365 F.3d 1181, 1187 (10th Cir. 2004). However, Woodfordestablished that proper exhaustion requires compliance with the prison’s procedural rules.
-4- Second, King seeks money damages for being put on the clean-up crew. This is relief necessarily encompassed by his two grievances, and not granted by the grievance officer. If King was not satisfiedby the grant of relief other than money damages, § 1997e(a) required that he ex haust available prison procedures by appealing to the warden. On this issue, Booth v. Churneris controlling. In that case, the inmate filed a grievance, received non-monetary relief at the first stage of the process, and then sued for money damages. The Supreme Court upheld the dismissal of his complaint for failure to exhaust becau se he did not administratively appeal the grant of partial relief. 532 U.S. at 739-41.

We decline to consider defendants’ alternative argument that King failed to exhaust because his grievances did not request money dama ges. In Woodford v. Ngo , 548 U.S. 81, 88 (2006), the Supreme Court held that § 1997e(a ) requires “proper” exhaustion, that is, “a prisoner must comp lete the administrative review process in accordance with the applicableprocedural rules, including deadlines, as a precondition to bringing suit in federal court.” Wher e prison grievance procedures clearly require an inmate to state all the relief he seeks, even monetary relief that may be beyond the authority of grievance officials to gran t, it is certainly arguable that “proper” exhaustion requires compliance with that rule, even though the opinion in Woodford did not expressly address this issue. Cf. Spruill v. Gillis , 372 F.3d 218, 233-34 (3d Cir. 2003). 2-5- Here, the NCF grievance and appeal forms ask the grievant to state the “action requested.” Is this enough to foreclose a § 1983 lawsuit for relief that the inmate did not expressly seek even though he otherwis e fully exhausted the available grievance procedures? “The level of detail necessary in a grie vance to comply with the grievance procedures will vary from system to system and claim to claim, but it is the prison’s requirements, not the PLRA, that define the boundaries of proper exhaustion.” Jones v. Bock , 549 U.S. 199, 218 (2007). As King failed to fully exhaust the available grievance procedures , we leave this issue for another day.

The judgment of the district court is affirmed.

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