In the

United States Court of Appeals

for the Seventh Circuit

____________________ 

No. 20-1963 

SHAWN WILLIAMS, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v.

NAVEEN RAJOLI and TARA POWERS, 

Defendants-Appellees. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Southern District of Indiana, Terre Haute Division. 

No. 2:19-cv-00442-JPH-DLP — James P. Hanlon, Judge. 

____________________ 

ARGUED SEPTEMBER 14, 2021 — DECIDED AUGUST 17, 2022 

____________________ 

Before SYKES, Chief Judge, and EASTERBROOK and

BRENNAN, Circuit Judges. 

SYKES, Chief Judge. Shawn Williams is an inmate at 

Wabash Valley Correctional Facility in Carlisle, Indiana. He 

sued a prison doctor and nurse under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 

accusing them of deliberate indifference to his medical 

needs. Specifically, Williams alleges that the doctor erroneously discontinued the pain medication needed to manage 

his chronic tendinitis and that the nurse made him do pain-
2 No. 20-1963 

ful exercises while handcuffed and shackled at a follow-up 

appointment.

Before filing suit Williams attempted to resolve his complaints through Indiana’s administrative-review system. As 

required by the state’s grievance policies, Williams tried to 

informally resolve his complaints before filing a formal 

grievance with prison officials. But Indiana’s policy also 

requires formal grievances to be filed within ten business 

days of the incident giving rise to the complaint. Williams 

did not meet this deadline, believing that prison officials 

needed to respond to his informal grievance attempts before 

he could file a formal grievance. When prison officials did

not respond to Williams’s initial attempts at informal resolution, he continued to pursue the matter informally. Only 

after Williams received a response did he file a formal 

grievance, but by then it was untimely. 

The district court granted the defendants’ motion for 

summary judgment, ruling that Williams failed to exhaust 

his administrative remedies. We affirm. The Prison Litigation Reform Act (“PLRA”) requires a prisoner to exhaust all 

available remedies in the prison’s administrative-review 

system before filing suit in federal court. Williams did not do 

so. Though he eventually submitted a formal grievance, it 

was filed too late. Williams did not need a response to his 

attempts at informal resolution to file a formal grievance. 

And his argument that he had good cause for his failure to 

timely file a formal grievance is both unexhausted and 

waived. 
No. 20-1963 3 

I. Background

Williams suffers from chronic tendinitis in his left knee 

and has been prescribed pain medication. After injuring his 

pinky finger, Williams received an X-ray and was seen by

Dr. Naveen Rajoli on July 19, 2019, to review the results. 

Williams’s finger did not require further treatment, but in an 

apparent error, Williams was removed from his pain medication. The next day Williams filed a “Request for Health 

Care” form with prison officials indicating that he was still 

experiencing pain in his knee and that he was no longer 

receiving his medication. Williams was seen by nurse Tara 

Powers on July 23. He alleges that during this appointment, 

she caused him further knee pain by making him do exercises while handcuffed and shackled. His medication wasn’t 

reinstated at that time, and Williams continued to experience 

pain in his knee.

Williams then began the first of a series of attempts to resolve his complaints informally. Indiana’s grievance policy 

requires a prisoner to first “attempt to resolve [his] complaint informally” with prison officials. IND. DEP’T OF CORR.,

ADMIN. P. NO. 00-02-301, § X.1 He may then file a formal 

administrative grievance. A prisoner must “provide evidence” of his attempts at informal resolution when filing a 

formal grievance, of which the policy provides two examples: “‘To/From’ correspondence” and “State Form 36935, 

‘Request for Interview’” forms. Id. The formal grievance 

procedures reiterate that a prisoner must “document [his]

1 Indiana’s grievance policy was revised effective September 1, 2020. We 

refer to the earlier policy that was in effect at the time of Williams’s 

complaints in July 2019.
4 No. 20-1963 

attempts at informal resolution” when filing a grievance. Id.

§ XI.A.4. A prisoner must also file his formal grievance with 

the prison’s Offender Grievance Specialist within ten “business days from the date of the incident giving rise to the 

complaint or concern.” Id. § XI. The formal filing must 

“explain how the situation or incident affects” the prisoner 

and “suggest appropriate relief or remedy.” Id. § XI.A.7–.8. 

The Offender Grievance Specialist reviews formal grievances. Formal grievances that don’t comply with the policies 

will be returned to the prisoner, who then has five business 

days to revise and resubmit. Id. § XI.B. At this stage of the 

process, a prisoner has an opportunity to cure both a failure 

to properly explain his attempts at informal resolution and a 

failure to initiate informal resolution if it wasn’t attempted. A 

formal grievance that doesn’t comply with the policies may 

still be considered if “good cause” is shown for the violation: 

“[t]he Offender Grievance Specialist has the discretion to 

consider” noncompliant grievances when the prisoner 

satisfies the good-cause standard. Id.

Williams submitted two informal grievances on Request 

for Interview forms to Amy Wright, Wabash Valley prison’s 

Director of Nursing, between July 23 and July 28—the first 

protesting the medication discontinuation, the second 

challenging Powers’s treatment. Williams says he submitted 

these informal requests through the prison’s internal mail 

system. But the prison has no record of them, and Williams 

never made copies. Prison officials never replied to either of 

these informal grievance attempts.

After not receiving a response to his two July attempts at

informal resolution, Williams submitted two more informal 

grievances on August 5, again on Request for Interview 
No. 20-1963 5 

forms. He made handwritten copies of these forms and 

subsequent informal grievance forms. But in the meantime, 

the time limit of ten business days to file a formal grievance 

was ticking down. Williams had until August 2 to file a 

formal grievance about being removed from his medication 

on July 19. And he had until August 6 to file a formal grievance regarding Powers’s treatment on July 23. 

Williams submitted two more informal grievances on 

Request for Interview forms—one on August 12 and another 

on August 15. And he also submitted a Request for Health 

Care form on August 12. Wright responded to Williams’s

August 12 request for health care on August 19, indicating 

that Williams had seen Dr. Rajoli on July 19, his medications 

had been stopped, and he was scheduled to see a different 

doctor that day (August 19). 

On August 20 Williams filed his first formal grievance. 

Prison officials returned the formal grievance to Williams on 

August 29 for failure to comply with the filing deadline of 

ten business days. Williams did not revise and resubmit the 

formal grievance. Instead, he filed a pro se § 1983 complaint 

in district court against Dr. Rajoli and Powers alleging that 

they were deliberately indifferent to his medical needs in 

violation of the Eighth Amendment. Dr. Rajoli and Powers 

moved for summary judgment, arguing that Williams failed 

to exhaust administrative remedies as required by the PLRA 

by failing to file a timely formal grievance. The judge granted the motion. 

Williams appealed and sought permission to proceed in 

forma pauperis. The judge denied this request, finding that an 

appellate challenge to whether Williams had exhausted his 

administrative remedies would not be in good faith. See
6 No. 20-1963 

28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3). Williams challenged that decision in 

this court, and a motions panel authorized him to proceed in

forma pauperis and recruited pro bono counsel to assist him

on appeal.2

II. Discussion

We review de novo a district court’s decision to grant 

summary judgment for failure to exhaust administrative 

remedies. Dole v. Chandler, 438 F.3d 804, 809 (7th Cir. 2006). 

We view the facts in the light most favorable to Williams, the 

nonmoving party. Hill v. Snyder, 817 F.3d 1037, 1039 (7th Cir. 

2016). Under the PLRA, “[n]o action shall be brought with 

respect to prison conditions under section 1983 of this title, 

or any other Federal law, 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). Failure to exhaust administrative remedies is an 

affirmative defense; the burden of proof is on the defendants. Ramirez v. Young, 906 F.3d 530, 533 (7th Cir. 2018). 

We take “a strict compliance approach to exhaustion” 

under the PLRA. Dole, 438 F.3d at 809. Exhaustion requires a 

prisoner to “take each of the steps prescribed by the state’s 

administrative rules governing prison grievances.” Chambers 

v. Sood, 956 F.3d 979, 983 (7th Cir. 2020). And if the prison 

administrative authorities can “take some action”—even if 

it’s not the requested action and even if the prisoner believes 

that exhaustion will be “futile”—administrative remedies 

are available, and the prisoner must exhaust them. Dole, 

2 Richard W. Fox, Minh O. Nguyen-Dang, and Michael A. Scodro of 

Mayer Brown accepted the representation and have ably discharged 

their duties. We thank them for their service to their client and the court.
No. 20-1963 7 

438 F.3d at 809. But a prisoner needn’t exhaust a remedy 

that’s “unavailable,” such as when “prison employees do not 

respond to a properly filed grievance or otherwise use 

affirmative misconduct to prevent a prisoner from exhausting.” Id. 

A. Formal Grievance Filing Deadline

Williams contends that the formal grievance process was 

unavailable to him until prison officials responded to his 

attempts at informal resolution. He claims that without a 

response he could not submit the evidence required to 

document his attempts at informal resolution. 

This argument misreads Indiana’s grievance policy. To be 

sure, the policy required Williams to “attempt to resolve” his 

grievance informally, and he needed to “provide evidence” 

of his attempt at informal resolution. IND. DEP’T OF CORR.,

ADMIN. P. NO. 00-02-301, § X. But the policy doesn’t require a 

prison official to respond to the informal resolution request 

before a prisoner can file a formal grievance. The need for 

evidence of an attempt at informal resolution isn’t linked to a 

response from prison officials; the policies don’t require 

specific documentary evidence to file a formal grievance. 

Though Williams believed otherwise, he should have 

“err[ed] on the side of exhaustion” and timely initiated the 

formal grievance process when he did not receive a response

before the ten-day deadline expired. Ross v. Blake, 578 U.S. 

632, 644 (2016). 

Moreover, formal grievances that are returned because 

the prisoner failed to attempt to resolve the complaint 

informally can be revised and resubmitted. That’s true both 

if the prisoner failed to document his attempt at informal 
8 No. 20-1963 

resolution and if the prisoner failed to begin informal resolution at all. The prison’s Return of Grievance form advises 

prisoners that “[i]f you have tried to resolve [the complaint] 

informally, please fill out the grievance form to indicate that. 

If you have not tried to resolve it informally, you have five 

(5) days to begin that process.” The latter occurred in Hill, 

817 F.3d at 1039. There, the prisoner filed four formal grievances. He filed one grievance before he had attempted to 

resolve the issue informally, and the grievance was returned

on that basis. Id. But he was given the opportunity to pursue 

informal resolution and resubmit the formal grievance. Id. at 

1040. Even if Williams believed that he lacked the required 

information to file a formal grievance, he could have made 

revisions after it was timely filed. 

Williams relies on Hill and Dole to argue that the prison 

officials’ failure to respond to his attempts at informal resolution made the administrative process unavailable. This 

reliance is misplaced. In Dole we held that a prisoner had 

exhausted his administrative remedies when he timely 

mailed his grievance and followed prison “administrative 

rules to the letter,” but the grievance never arrived because 

“prison officials were responsible for ... mishandling” it. 

438 F.3d at 811. “In this limited context,” the prison officials’ 

“own mistake” led us to conclude that the prisoner had 

cleared the exhaustion hurdle. Id. Not so here. Williams 

simply failed to timely initiate the formal grievance process. 

He is therefore subject to the PLRA exhaustion rule that 

“when the prisoner causes the unavailability of the grievance 

process by simply not filing a grievance in a timely manner, 

the process is not unavailable but rather forfeited.” Kaba v. 

Stepp, 458 F.3d 678, 684 (7th Cir. 2006). 
No. 20-1963 9 

In Hill we held that the administrative process was unavailable to a prisoner at Wabash Valley when prison officials 

refused to give him the formal grievance form. 817 F.3d at 

1039, 1041. Prison officials thus affirmatively prevented him 

from beginning the grievance process. But unlike the formal 

grievance form, a response to an informal grievance isn’t 

needed to initiate the grievance process and therefore a 

delayed response doesn’t make the administrative process 

unavailable. See Cannon v. Washington, 418 F.3d 714, 718–19 

(7th Cir. 2005) (per curiam) (holding that a prisoner failed to 

exhaust even though prison staff confiscated his legal documents because those documents weren’t needed to file a 

grievance). And Williams’s case is a far cry from other kinds 

of affirmative misconduct that we have held interfered with 

a prisoner’s ability to exhaust—like when prison officials 

allegedly threatened a prisoner’s life for using the administrative process. See Kaba, 458 F.3d at 680, 682, 686. 

Rather than helping Williams, Hill illustrates why he 

failed to exhaust. In one of the other grievances at issue 

there, the prisoner attempted to resolve the dispute informally and like Williams received no reply. Hill, 817 F.3d at 

1039. But unlike Williams, the prisoner filed his formal 

grievance by the required deadline. Prison officials returned 

the formal grievance claiming that it had been informally

resolved. Id. We held that the prisoner failed to exhaust 

because he did not revise and resubmit his formal grievance 

to rebut the prison’s assertion that his claim had been informally resolved. Id. at 1040–41. Hill illustrates that a prisoner 

must revise his formal grievance even if he has not received 

a reply to his informal grievance attempt. The same is true 

when the prisoner initially files the formal grievance: a reply 
10 No. 20-1963 

from prison officials to the prisoner’s informal grievance 

attempt is not required.

Williams offers a second reason why he needed to wait 

for a reply from prison officials to file his formal grievance. 

He contends that without a reply he couldn’t adequately 

explain how the incidents affected him or suggest appropriate remedies. 

But it isn’t clear why not. There’s no requirement that the

formal grievance name the prison official involved in the 

incident. See IND. DEP’T OF CORR., ADMIN. P. NO. 00-02-301, 

§ X. Williams’s attempt to analogize to Hill on this point is 

unpersuasive. Not receiving a reply to a request for an 

informal resolution is not the functional equivalent of being 

denied a formal grievance form. Unlike in Hill where prison 

officials failed to provide the prisoner with the formal 

grievance form, 817 F.3d at 1041, no one prevented Williams 

from explaining his complaints and suggesting a remedy in 

a formal grievance. He believed that he was erroneously 

taken off his medication and that his medication should be 

reinstated, and he further believed that the nurse who 

treated him on July 23 should be disciplined for making him 

do exercises that caused him further pain. Williams made 

exactly these arguments in both informal grievances and in 

his untimely formal grievance. Indiana’s policies don’t call 

for more specificity than that. The administrative remedies 

were fully available to Williams; he just failed to exhaust 

them. 

B. Good Cause

Williams argues for the first time on appeal that his failure to timely file a formal grievance should be excused for 
No. 20-1963 11 

good cause. This argument is waived. Even if we set the 

waiver aside, the argument is unexhausted.

Prison officials have the discretion to consider an untimely formal grievance if the prisoner can show good cause for 

the delay. IND. DEP’T OF CORR., ADMIN. P. NO. 00-02-301, 

§ XI.B. But Williams never made that argument in his formal 

grievance. Nor did his formal grievance specifically mention 

the most pertinent fact to his good-cause claim—that he 

submitted timely informal grievances in July and waited to 

file a formal grievance because he mistakenly believed that 

he needed to wait for a response. And Williams did not 

correct this error by revising and resubmitting his formal 

grievance within the required deadline of five business days. 

Williams thus failed to exhaust his good-cause argument, 

just like he failed to exhaust his other claims. See Cannon, 

418 F.3d at 718 (holding that a prisoner failed to exhaust 

when he failed to revise a grievance form to explain good 

cause for his untimely filing).

AFFIRMED