United States Court of Appeals

for the Fifth Circuit ____________

No. 22-30122 

____________

Donald Barnes, 

Plaintiff—Appellant, 

versus

Darryl Vannoy, Warden; Peter Lollis, Major; John Maples, 

Major; Shawn Miller, Sergeant, 

Defendants—Appellees. 

______________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the Middle District of Louisiana

USDC No. 3:19-CV-764

______________________________

Before Jones, Barksdale, and Elrod, Circuit Judges.

Per Curiam:*

Donald Barnes appeals the district court’s dismissal of his claims

against several prison officials under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for failure to exhaust 

his administrative remedies. Because we agree with Barnes that 

administrative relief became unavailable when his grievance was mistakenly 

_____________________

* This opinion is not designated for publication. See 5th Cir. R. 47.5.

United States Court of Appeals

Fifth Circuit

FILED

December 4, 2023

Lyle W. Cayce

Clerk

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rejected at the screening phase, leaving him with no way to pursue an 

administrative appeal, we REVERSE and REMAND.

I

Donald Barnes is a state prisoner incarcerated in the Louisiana State 

Penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana. In April 2019, he was placed in 

administrative lockdown, and assigned to a cell shared with Terrence 

Napoleon, who had killed another prisoner with a brick some weeks prior. 

Two nights after Barnes was placed in the cell, Napoleon cut Barnes’sthroat. 

Barnes survived, and 82 days after he was attacked, he filed a grievance with 

the Warden’s Office asserting that several prison officials had been 

deliberately indifferent.

Louisiana’s Administrative Remedy Procedure prescribes two steps 

that prisoners must take when using the grievance process. First, a formal 

grievance must be filed within 90 days of the complained-of incident. La. 

Admin. Code tit. 22, pt. 1, § 325(G)(1). Second, if the prisoner is not satisfied 

with the determination made at the first step, he may appeal to the secretary 

of the Department of Public Safety and Corrections. Id. § 325(J)(1)(b). But 

before any formal grievance is reviewed under the first step, it is first 

screened for deficiencies. Id. § 325(I). 

Having been filed within the 90-day window, Barnes’s grievance was 

timely. However, a screening officer mistakenly rejected the grievance as 

untimely, noting incorrectly that “THE DATE OF INCIDENT IS MORE 

THAN 90 DAYS PAST DUE.” All parties agree this was an error. By the 

time Barnes’s grievance was returned to him, over 90 days had passed since

he was attacked.

In November 2019, Barnes filed the instant lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. 

§ 1983 against the named prison officials, claiming that they had violated his 

Eighth Amendment rights by failing to protect him from a known dangerous 

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and violent offender. Appellees moved for summary judgment, arguing that 

Barnes had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies. The district court 

granted Appellees’ motion and dismissed Barnes’s claims.

II

We review the district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo, 

applying the same standards as the district court and viewing the evidence in 

the light most favorable to the non-moving party. Dillon v. Rogers, 596 F.3d 

260, 266 (5th Cir. 2010); Huskey v. Jones, 45 F.4th 827, 830 (5th Cir. 2022). 

Summary judgment is appropriate “if the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as 

a matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a).

Under the federal Prison Litigation Reform Act, prisoners may not 

bring any action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 “until such administrative remedies 

as are available are exhausted.” 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a). “The petitioner must 

have ‘pursue[d] the grievance remedy to conclusion’—substantial 

compliance with administrative procedures is not enough.” Bargher v. White, 

928 F.3d 439, 447 (5th Cir. 2019) (quoting Wright v. Hollingsworth, 260 F.3d 

357, 358 (5th Cir. 2001)). The procedures that prisoners must follow “are 

defined not by the PLRA, but by the prison grievance process itself.” Jones 

v. Bock, 549 U.S. 199, 218 (2007); see also Wilson v. Epps, 776 F.3d 296, 299–

300 (5th Cir. 2015).

Louisiana’s Administrative Remedy Procedure, contained within the 

Louisiana Administrative Code, prescribes a two-step grievance process with 

an initial screening phase. “[A] prisoner has not exhausted his remedies until 

he has completed both” of those steps. Bargher, 928 F.3d at 447. But when 

a grievance is rejected at the screening phase, it cannot proceed further. La. 

Admin. Code tit. 22, pt. 1, § 325(I)(1)(c)(iii). Instead, “the offender must 

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correct the noted deficiencies and resubmit the request to the ARP screening 

officer.” Id.

Barnes did not exhaust his administrative remedies under the ARP’s 

plain terms. He did not proceed to the second step because his grievance was 

rejected at the screening phase, preventing him from appealing before he 

corrected the “noted deficiencies” in his grievance. Usually, our analysis 

would end there. 

However, the PLRA requires exhaustion only of “such administrative 

remedies as are available.” 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a) (emphasis added). 

Accordingly, the Supreme Court has instructed that “an inmate is required 

to exhaust those, but only those, grievance procedures that are ‘capable of 

use’ to obtain ‘some relief for the action complained of.’” Ross v. Blake, 578 

U.S. 632, 642 (2016) (quoting Booth v. Churner, 532 U.S. 731, 738 (2001)). 

For example, a remedy is unavailable when it is “essentially ‘unknowable’—

so that no ordinary prisoner can make sense of what it demands.” Id. at 644 

(quoting Goebert v. Lee Cnty., 510 F.3d 1312, 1323 (11th Cir. 2007)); see also 

Goebert, 510 F.3d at 1322–23 (holding that where “there is nothing in [an 

inmate handbook] about any procedure for appealing the denial of a 

complaint,” that process is unknowable). 

Here, the ARP does not provide instruction to prisoners like Barnes 

whose otherwise-proper grievances are mistakenly rejected at the screening 

phase. They are expressly prohibited from appealing that determination, La. 

Admin. Code tit. 22, pt. 1, § 325(I)(1)(c)(iii), and even if some other avenue 

exists to correct the screening officer’s mistake, the ARP does not explain it. 

Further, had Barnes submitted a new grievance pointing out the mistake, that 

grievance would itself have fallen outside the ARP’s 90-day window. It 

would have been reasonable for him to believe that he could no longer submit 

a timely correction. Any remedy the ARP may have provided Barnes at that 

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point was essentially unknowable, and he was not required to exhaust any 

such remedy.

We stress that our holding is a narrow one confined to the facts before 

us. As Ross itself made clear, there is no “special circumstances” exception 

to the PLRA and prisoners should always “err on the side of exhaustion” 

when doubts arise. 578 U.S. at 641–42, 644. And we have previously held 

that “courts may not deem grievance procedures unavailable merely because 

an inmate was ignorant of them, so long as the inmate had a fair, reasonable 

opportunity to apprise himself of the procedures.” Huskey, 45 F.4th at 832

(quoting Davis v. Fernandez, 798 F.3d 290, 295 (5th Cir. 2015)). But here, 

due to the mistake by the screening officer, Barnes had no such opportunity.

* * *

We REVERSE and REMAND for further proceedings consistent 

with this opinion.

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