After examining the briefs and the record, we have concluded that oral argument is *

unnecessary. Thus, the appeal is submitted on the briefs and the record. See FED. R. APP. P.

34(a)(2).

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted August 21, 2008*

Decided August 21, 2008

Before

 RICHARD A. POSNER, Circuit Judge

ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge

DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge

No. 08-1251

DARRIN GRUENBERG,

 Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

TIMOTHY LUNDQUIST, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District

Court for the Eastern District of

Wisconsin.

No. 06-C-0256

C. N. Clevert, Jr., 

Judge.

O R D E R

Wisconsin inmate Darrin Gruenberg brought this civil-rights suit against various

Wisconsin officials claiming that they were deliberately indifferent to his mental-health

needs when they refused to transfer him to the Wisconsin Resource Center (WRC). See 42

U.S.C. § 1983. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants and

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with

 Fed. R. App. P. 32.1
No. 08-1251 Page 2

dismissed the case, finding that Gruenberg had not exhausted the Wisconsin prison

system’s administrative remedies. We affirm.

As the district court noted, Gruenberg’s “proposed findings of fact” were filed too

late and failed to include citations to the record, as required by Eastern District of

Wisconsin Civil Local Rule 56.2(b). Because Gruenberg did not comply with the rule, the

court properly disregarded his proposed findings. See E.D. WIS. CIV. L.R. 56.2(e); Fabriko

Acquisition Corp. v. Prokos, No. 06-3889, 2008 WL 2894376, at *2 (July 29, 2008); see also

McNeil v. United States, 508 U.S. 106, 113 (1993) (pro se civil litigants required to follow

procedural rules). The court, however, considered the admissible evidence Gruenberg

submitted; so, we also take the facts from the defendants’ proposed findings of fact and

from Gruenberg’s admissible evidence.

WRC is operated by Wisconsin’s Department of Health and Family Services to

provide supervision, treatment, and programming for inmates who need “extensive mental

health services.” For an inmate to gain admission to WRC, first the psychological

supervisor at the inmate’s prison must submit a formal request, and then WRC’s officials

review the request and decide whether to accept the inmate. 

From October 2002 until December 2003, Gruenberg was incarcerated at WRC to

participate in an anger-management program. While at WRC Gruenberg resisted

treatment, lied to the staff, got into fights, and was generally uncooperative. The

Department of Corrections’s program review committee, which annually evaluates each

inmate to determine whether the inmate should be transferred to a different facility, see

WIS. ADMIN. CODE § DOC 302.15, determined that Gruenberg’s “conduct has become a

barrier to benefitting from programming.” Based on the committee’s recommendation, the

Department of Corrections transferred Gruenberg to the Green Bay Correctional

Institution, where guards could monitor him more closely. The committee provided

Gruenberg with a written decision and notified him of his right to appeal to the director of

the Bureau of Offender Classification and Movement, see WIS. ADMIN. CODE §§ DOC

302.03(8), DOC 302.18, but Gruenberg did not challenge the decision.

From December 2003 until he brought this suit in March 2006, Gruenberg made it

his mission to gain readmission to WRC, or so he told his psychologists. His medical

records show that he cut himself repeatedly with shards of glass and plastic, bit himself,

threatened to commit suicide, and had problems controlling his behavior. He was

examined many times by three psychologists at two prisons. They agreed that Gruenberg

had problems controlling his conduct and that he was obsessed with his plan to get

readmitted to WRC, and they all concluded, however, that he did not suffer from a mental
No. 08-1251 Page 3

illness. Despite the unsupported statements to the contrary in Gruenberg’s verified

complaint and affidavit, there is no evidence that any psychologist recommended, formally

or informally, that he be admitted to WRC.

Still Gruenberg persevered. He sent at least two letters to the admissions director of

WRC requesting to be readmitted. The center responded that it does not accept informal

requests for admittance and that only the staff at the prison where the inmate is housed can

submit a formal application. In April 2005 Gruenberg attended a periodic review with the

program review committee and requested a transfer to WRC. The committee denied the

request and instead recommended transfer to different facility. The committee gave him a

copy of its decision and informed him of his right to appeal, but he did not do so. In July

2005 Gruenberg submitted a complaint requesting a transfer to WRC, but the inmate

complaint examiner rejected it explaining that decisions about transfers are outside the

scope of the inmate complaint review process. 

Gruenberg then filed suit alleging that staff at WRC and the Department of Health

and Family Services knew that he was experiencing “acute psychological problems” that

could be treated only at WRC but ignored his pleas to be admitted. The parties conducted

discovery and the state officials moved for summary judgment, arguing that Gruenberg

had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies and that, in any event, he had not put

forward sufficient evidence that they were deliberately indifferent to a serious medical

need. The district court granted the motion, holding that Gruenberg had not exhausted his

administrative remedies because he did not appeal the determinations of the program

review committee first recommending a transfer out of WRC and then rejecting his request

to be transferred back. We review de novo both a district court’s decision to grant

summary judgment and its conclusion that a plaintiff has failed to exhaust administrative

remedies. See Obriecht v. Raemisch, 517 F.3d 489, 492 (7th Cir. 2008). 

Gruenberg argues that there was no procedure for him to request a transfer to WRC

and thus that there were no available administrative remedies for him to exhaust. A

prisoner must exhaust all available administrative remedies before he can bring a civilrights action in federal court challenging any aspect of prison life. See 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a);

Porter v. Nussle, 534 U.S. 516, 532 (2002); Obriecht, 517 F.3d at 492. A remedy is available so

long as an administrative procedure can lead to some relief, even if it is not the precise

relief the inmate wants. See Booth v. Churner, 532 U.S. 731, 741 & n.6 (2001); Larkin v.

Galloway, 266 F.3d 718, 723 (7th Cir. 2001). So, if the Department of Corrections can take

some action in response to an inmate’s complaint, then the inmate is required to follow the

department’s procedures before he runs to court. See Dole v. Chandler, 438 F.3d 804, 809 (7th

Cir. 2006).
No. 08-1251 Page 4

Gruenberg explains that he did not appeal the two decisions he received from the

program review committee because neither the committee nor the director of the Bureau of

Offender Classification and Movement has the authority to grant him admission to WRC. 

He might be right about the limitation on their authority; the state officials admitted in

their proposed findings of fact that the only way for an inmate to secure a transfer to WRC

is for a psychologist to recommend the transfer and then for WRC accept the inmate. But

still his argument fails because, even if the committee and the director could not have

secured him a place at WRC, they could have placed him in a special program or

recommended transfer to a different facility to accommodate his mental-health needs. See

WIS. ADMIN. CODE §§ 302.15; 302.17(6); see, e.g., Department of Corrections, Division of

Adult Institutions, Racine Correctional Institution Annual Report 2006-2007, at 20-21, 25-26,

available at http://www.wi-doc.com/index_adult.htm (describing several angermanagement and other behavior-modification programs and psychological services

available at one prison). Furthermore, if he was unhappy with the mental-health treatment

he was receiving, he could have filed a complaint with the inmate complaint examiner

explaining why he believed his care was inadequate. See WIS. ADMIN. CODE § 310.08. And

although a successful complaint may not have led to a transfer to WRC, it still could have

required officials to provide Gruenberg with better mental-health care. See Larkin, 266 F.3d

at 723 (inmate must exhaust all administrative procedures even if they “cannot provide the

only relief that the prisoner is seeking”). Because the Department of Corrections’s

administrative procedures could have provided Gruenberg with more extensive mentalhealth treatment or programming, his failure to exhaust them dooms his claim.

AFFIRMED.