Opinion ID: 3034592
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Proper Disposition of Mixed Complaints

Text: Having rejected defendants’ suggestion that we adopt a total exhaustion-dismissal rule, we are left with a more disLIRA v. HERRERA 14941 crete question: how should district courts proceed in cases in which the plaintiff has filed complaints with both exhausted and unexhausted claims? [10] In light of § 1997e(a)’s text and the policy rationales surrounding its adoption and application according to Ninth Circuit and Supreme Court law, we believe that a dual rule is appropriate. We hold that the proper treatment of a mixed complaint should depend on the relatedness of the claims contained within. [11] When a plaintiff has filed a “mixed” complaint and wishes to proceed with only the exhausted claims, a district court should simply dismiss the unexhausted claims when the unexhausted claims are not intertwined with the properly exhausted claims. This is likely to be the ordinary case in PLRA suits, where plaintiffs often raise several unrelated claims in a single lawsuit. See Ortiz, 380 F.3d at 661 (noting that § 1983 suits “routinely seek to address more than one grievance — sometimes a laundry list of grievances — relating to different events or circumstances”). Here, for example, Lira raised some issues that had nothing to do with his gang status or administrative segregation confinement. The district court addressed those issues on the merits and resolved them, considering the total exhaustion-dismissal rule only thereafter. We note the contrast in this regard to cases in the habeas context. While habeas petitions may contain various claims that rest on different constitutional provisions, they all revolve around one incident: the defendant’s conviction. See Mayle v. Felix, 125 S. Ct. 2562, 2570 (2005) (holding that a claim arising out of the same trial or sentence is insufficient to meet Rule 15’s same “conduct, transaction, or occurrence” test because “federal habeas claims, by their very nature, challenge the constitutionality of a conviction or sentence”). This fact was of particular concern to the Supreme Court when it adopted a total exhaustion-dismissal rule for mixed habeas petitions in Rose. The Court noted that “[r]equiring dismissal 14942 LIRA v. HERRERA of petitions containing both exhausted and unexhausted claims will relieve the district courts of the difficult if not impossible task of deciding when claims are related, and will reduce the temptation to consider unexhausted claims.” Rose, 455 U.S. at 519. This consideration is inapplicable when a prisoner’s PLRA complaint contains markedly different claims. In that instance, a district court will be able to determine with relative ease which claims have been exhausted and which still need to be presented to prison officials. Under such circumstances, there will not often be any danger that an unexhausted claim will be implicitly decided while addressing an exhausted one. On the other hand, when a plaintiff’s “mixed” complaint includes exhausted and unexhausted claims that are closely related and difficult to untangle, dismissal of the defective complaint with leave to amend to allege only fully exhausted claims, is the proper approach. This is the procedure prescribed for mixed habeas petitions by the Supreme Court in Rose. Although Rose adopted a total exhaustion-dismissal rule, the Supreme Court, as noted, made clear that dismissal of an entire action is not always necessary. Instead, a petitioner should be allowed to “amend the petition to delete unexhausted claims, rather than returning to state court to exhaust all of his claims.” Id. at 520 (plurality op.); see also James v. Giles, 221 F.3d 1074, 1077 (9th Cir. 2000) (noting that, after Rose, courts have long required only dismissal of a partially defective habeas petition, rather than of the entire case).12 12 The Supreme Court recently reaffirmed the Rose rule that a petitioner can always amend his petition “to delete the unexhausted claims.” Rhines v. Weber, 125 S. Ct. 1528, 1535 (2005). A significant portion of the opinion in Rhines was devoted to analyzing how the one-year statute of limitations period applicable to habeas petitions could work in conjunction with the total exhaustion requirement to bar any relief. Id. at 1533-34. The opinion for the Court noted that “the court should allow the petitioner to delete the unexhausted claims and to proceed with the exhausted claims if dismissal of the entire petition would unreasonably impair the petitioner’s right to obtain federal relief,” id. at 1535, thereby providing guidance to district courts to be especially mindful of timeliness concerns when dealing with attempts to amend mixed petitions. LIRA v. HERRERA 14943 [12] Although we have noted that the analogy to habeas cases has limited applicability in the PLRA context, when a § 1983 suit contains interrelated claims, as habeas petitions invariably do, the concern regarding separating exhausted from unexhausted claims alluded to in Rose is relevant. For that reason, when a district court is faced with a mixed complaint containing claims that are closely related, the court should follow the approach set forth in Rose and its progeny: dismiss the complaint and allow the plaintiff the opportunity to amend his complaint to excise the unexhausted claims. In following this procedure, we expect that district courts will exercise their usual discretion in granting leave to amend such defective complaints. See FED. R. CIV. P. 15(a); Lopez, 203 F.3d at 1130-31. We note, however, that “[l]eave to amend should be granted unless the pleading ‘could not possibly be cured by the allegation of other facts,’ and should be granted more liberally to pro se plaintiffs.” Ramirez v. Galaza, 334 F.3d 850, 861 (9th Cir. 2003) (quoting Lopez, 203 F.3d at 1130, 1131), cert. denied, 124 S. Ct. 2388 (2004).