Opinion ID: 3031007
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Ngo Exhausted All Available Administrative

Text: Remedies as Required by the PLRA To appeal a state prison’s administrative decision, a California inmate must go through a four-step process. Step 1: With exceptions not relevant here, within fifteen working days of “the event or decision being appealed,” the inmate must first file an “informal” appeal, whereby “the appellant and staff involved in the action or decision attempt to resolve the grievance informally.” See Cal. Code Regs. tit. 15, §§ 3084.5(a), 3084.6(c). Step 2: Following rejection of the informal appeal, an inmate may file a first formal appeal with the prison’s Appeals Coordinator within fifteen working days. See id. §§ 3084.5(b), 3084.6(c). The Appeals Coordinator, charged with screening and categorizing appeals, “may” reject appeals NGO v. WOODFORD 3597 if “[t]ime limits for submitting the appeal are exceeded and the appellant had the opportunity to file within the prescribed time constraints.” Id. § 3084.3(c)(6). The regulations do not provide for review of an appeal at a higher administrative level if it has first been rejected on this procedural ground. See id. § 3084.3. But the prisoner may file a challenge with the Appeals Coordinator if he feels that the procedural ground was inaccurate. See id. Steps 3 and 4: The second formal appeal is reviewed by the institution’s head or regional parole administrator, while a designee of the Director of the Department of Corrections hears the third formal appeal. See id. § 3084.5(e)(1)-(2). The disposition of the third formal appeal is final and concludes all administrative remedies. Id. § 3084.1(a). As required under California law, Ngo filed an appeal with the Appeals Coordinator on June 18, 2001.2 The Appeals Coordinator exercised his discretion to screen out the appeal because Ngo did not file it within fifteen days of the December 2000 disciplinary action, as was required under the first step of California’s prison administrative appeals process.3 The Appeals Coordinator informed Ngo that the decision to screen out his untimely appeal could not be appealed unless Ngo alleged that his appeal was in fact timely. Consequently, Ngo challenged the Appeals Coordinator’s reason for rejecting his appeal in a follow-up petition a week later, asserting 2 The record is unclear whether the June 18, 2001, appeal was at the informal or first formal level. The district court referred to the June appeal as informal. Ngo, however, claims that a letter he sent on March 20, 2001, to the Deputy Warden constituted his informal appeal, while the June 18, 2001, appeal comprised his first formal appeal. The Appeals Coordinator screens out appeals at the first formal level, not at the informal level. This suggests that the June 2001 appeal, rejected by the Appeals Coordinator for untimeliness, was in fact Ngo’s first formal appeal. 3 Why prison filing deadlines tend to be so short is unclear. See McCarthy, 503 U.S. at 152 (“[W]e have not been apprised of any urgency or exigency justifying this timetable.”). 3598 NGO v. WOODFORD that the ongoing nature of his injury preserved the timeliness of his appeal. The Appeals Coordinator again rejected Ngo’s appeal. The district court concluded that only a decision at the third formal level of appeal exhausts a prisoner’s administrative remedies. Because no such ruling was rendered in the instant case, the district court held that Ngo had not exhausted his administrative remedies. According to the district court, the Appeals Coordinator’s rejection of Ngo’s appeal for untimeliness did not excuse Ngo from exhausting all levels of appeal, but this reasoning is not persuasive. The PLRA requires prisoners to exhaust all available administrative remedies before filing a § 1983 claim in federal court. See 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a). With the Appeals Coordinator’s second decision, Ngo exhausted his appeals because he could go no further in the prison’s administrative system; no remedies remained available to him. The defendants have the burden of raising and proving a prisoner’s failure to exhaust under the PLRA. See Wyatt, 315 F.3d at 1119. Attempting to carry this burden, the defendants assert that Ngo’s failure “to comply with applicable administrative filing requirements” was equivalent to a failure to exhaust. This argument, however, confuses the doctrines of exhaustion and procedural default. As explained below, the failure to exhaust bars a remedy in federal court if one is still available in the state’s administrative system. See Franklin v. Johnson, 290 F.3d 1223, 1230-31 (9th Cir. 2002). By contrast, procedural default has its origins in the adequate and independent state ground doctrine and blocks federal courts from considering a state court’s judgment “if that judgment rests on a state-law ground that is both independent of the merits of the federal claim and has an adequate basis for the court’s decision.” Id. at 1230 (quoting Harris v. Reed, 489 U.S. 255, 260 (1989)). Thus, unlike the exhaustion doctrine, procedural default bars federal review in NGO v. WOODFORD 3599 two situations: “when a state court has been presented with the federal claim, but declined to reach the issue for procedural reasons, or if it is clear that the state court would hold the claim procedurally barred.” Id. at 1230-31 (citing Harris, 489 U.S. at 263 n.9) (internal quotations omitted).