Opinion ID: 304012
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: the exhaustion of available administrative remedies in this case

Text: 24 Beale claims that a white employee of the Miami, Florida, Post Office would not have been fired for engaging in the conduct with which he was charged, the use of foul language towards and an assault upon a superior. It is asserted that the punishment for a similar offense by a white employee would at most have been three days' suspension. Throughout the administrative review of the decision to take disciplinary action against Beale for his behavior on June 26, 1970, he and his counsel persistently refused to present the issue of racial discrimination to the postal authorities. When he was invited by the Assistant Postmaster-General to make such a claim, Beale declined to do so on the basis that the issue was then pending before a federal court. Beale's sole defense to the charges in the administrative proceedings apparently was his assertion that Braz provoked his actions. 25 Under these circumstances we reject Beale's alternative claim that available administrative remedies are now exhausted by the adverse decision of the Board of Appeals and Review during the progress of this appeal. We think rather that the doctrine of exhaustion of available administrative remedies requires a federal court plaintiff to establish that all claims which could have been entertained by the administrative agency involved were in fact presented to that agency for resolution. See, Unemployment Compensation Commission of Territory of Alaska v. Aragan, 1946, 329 U.S. 143, 155, 67 S.Ct. 245, 251, 91 L.Ed. 136. See also, Picard v. Connor, 1971, 404 U.S. 270, 92 S.Ct. 509, 30 L. Ed.2d 438, requiring in a state prisoner's federal habeas corpus action that full opportunity for state court review of federal constitutional claims must be sought before relief is available in a federal district court. 26 Beale deliberately refused to permit the postal authorities to consider his claim that he had received the excessive punishment of dismissal solely because of his race. Instead, he withheld that claim in order to raise it in the first instance in a federal court. Such a strategy, it appears to us, is calculated to disrupt the operation of the postal service's internal program aimed at the elimination of racial discrimination in employment. We are constrained to hold that Beale's refusal to raise the racial discrimination issue during the course of the administrative review of the decision to terminate his postal employment is tantamount to a deliberate bypass of available administrative remedies. Exhaustion of those remedies has not taken place.