Opinion ID: 782877
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: compliance with state procedural requirements

Text: 13 The Prison Litigation Reform Act prohibits inmates from challenging prison conditions in federal courts until they have exhausted their available administrative remedies. 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a). There is no doubt that under the PLRA, exhaustion by prisoners is mandatory. See Booth v. Churner, 532 U.S. 731, 739, 121 S.Ct. 1819, 149 L.Ed.2d 958 (2001); see also Page v. Torrey, 201 F.3d 1136,1139 (9th Cir.1999) (recognizing that exhaustion requirement applies only to those who are currently detained, not former prisoners, and noting agreement of the Second, Seventh, and Eighth Circuits). The exhaustion requirement ensures that state prison systems will have an opportunity to handle prison grievances internally before recourse to the federal courts becomes available. But exhaustion is not the same as procedural default, and in similar state administrative contexts, the Supreme Court has held that state timelines cannot foreclose access to the federal courts when a petitioner has exhausted his or her state administrative remedies by bringing a grievance to the state and pursuing that grievance through to the administrative agency's final ruling. That is, the exhaustion requirement is a termination requirement, requiring a petitioner to pursue administrative remedies as far as they exist. So long a prisoner meets this requirement, a federal claim will not be barred by the plaintiff's failure to comply with a state prison's internal procedural requirements.
14 By requiring prisoners who challenge the conditions of their confinement to exhaust first their state administrative remedies, the PLRA grants state prison systems the initial opportunity to address their internal problems. Whereas parts of the PLRA aim to ease the burden that meritless prisoner lawsuits impose on state law-enforcement officials and the federal docket, see, e.g., 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(c)(1) (permitting court to dismiss sua sponte prisoner suits that are obviously frivolous); id. § 1997e(f) (authorizing pretrial hearings via telephone or video conference rather than in-person appearance of the prisoner); id. § 1997e(g)(1) (permitting defendant to waive the right to reply to prisoner actions), nothing suggests that a goal of the act, and specifically, of the exhaustion requirement, was to defeat valid constitutional claims. Rather, the exhaustion requirement simply recognizes that unless a prisoner first presents his or her grievance to the state prison system, what will often be the most efficient mechanism to remedy a violation of federal law will be lost. See Porter v. Nussle, 534 U.S. 516, 525, 122 S.Ct. 983, 152 L.Ed.2d 12 (2002) (Congress afforded corrections officials time and opportunity to address complaints internally before allowing the initiation of a federal case.). The exhaustion requirement is therefore a benefit accorded to state prisons, an opportunity to satisfy those inmate grievances the state wishes to handle internally. See Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 475, 492, 93 S.Ct. 1827, 36 L.Ed.2d 439 (1973) (Since these internal problems of state prisons involve issues so peculiarly within state authority and expertise, the States have an important interest in not being bypassed in the correction of those problems.). It is an accommodation of our federal system designed to give the State an initial opportunity to pass upon and correct alleged violations of its prisoners' federal rights. Picard v. Connor, 404 U.S. 270, 275, 92 S.Ct. 509, 30 L.Ed.2d 438 (1971). It is not, however, designed to permit state administrative timelines to handcuff the federal courts in adjudicating cases involving important federal rights. Accordingly, the PLRA does not contain any language regarding the timeliness of grievance filings or the application of procedural default; if the state forgoes an opportunity to decide matters internally whether for internal time constraints or any other reason, the PLRA has nonetheless served its purpose, and the prisoner may proceed to federal court. 15 Because the purpose of the exhaustion requirement is to provide states the first opportunity to resolve problems themselves, an inmate who has not pursued available administrative remedies may not yet proceed in federal court. Thus, we have clearly held that an inmate does not exhaust available administrative remedies when the inmate entirely fails to invoke the prison's grievance procedure, see Hartsfield v. Vidor, 199 F.3d 305, 308-09 (6th Cir.1999); Brown v. Toombs, 139 F.3d 1102, 1104 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 525 U.S. 833, 119 S.Ct. 88, 142 L.Ed.2d 69 (1998), or when the inmate filed such a grievance but did not appeal the denial of that complaint to the highest possible administrative level, Wright v. Morris, 111 F.3d 414, 417 n. 3 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 522 U.S. 906, 118 S.Ct. 263, 139 L.Ed.2d 190 (1997); see also Freeman v. Francis, 196 F.3d 641, 645 (6th Cir.1999). However, we have not previously ruled in a published opinion 1 that an inmate fails to exhaust his or her available administrative remedies when the inmate invokes the prison's grievance system initially and appeals the denial of that grievance, but is time barred by the prison's administrative procedures. 16 Our precedent demonstrates only that, in keeping with the plain language of § 1997e(a), a prisoner does not exhaust his administrative remedies when he fails to commence the grievance process or to run the gamut of potential appeals. In Hartsfield, we dismissed a prisoner's § 1983 suit because the disappearance of the prisoner's grievance form, the lack of any evidence demonstrating that a grievance was actually filed, and the failure of the prisoner to refile a grievance did not support the argument that the prisoner ever began the grievance process. 199 F.3d at 308-09; see also Jones v. Smith, 266 F.3d 399, 400 (6th Cir.2001) (affirming dismissal of § 1983 suit because plaintiff prisoner was not vigilant enough in obtaining a grievance form after his initial request for one was denied and because the prisoner never made any other attempt to obtain a form or to file a grievance without a form). In Freeman, the exhaustion requirement was not met because the prisoner jumped the gun, and despite making some attempts to follow the proper grievance procedures, filed a federal complaint before completing all of the stages of the internal grievance process. 196 F.3d at 645. In Wright v. Morris, one prisoner filed an initial grievance, but then failed to appeal the denial of this grievance through the entire process. 111 F.3d at 417 n. 3; see also Harper v. Jenkin, 179 F.3d 1311, 1312 (11th Cir. 1999) (dismissing § 1983 claim because the inmate did not appeal the denial of the grievance, thus failing to give the state a full chance to hear the grievance). These cases thus address the situation in which the prisoner is attempting to bypass the exhaustion requirement by declining to file administrative complaints and then claiming that administrative remedies are time-barred and thus not then available. Wright, 111 F.3d at 417 n. 3. 17 Here, however, Thomas filed a grievance in the prison's formal grievance process, and once that grievance was denied, Thomas appealed as far as he could. He had quite literally exhausted his ability to go any further within the internal prison system. There were no more avenues to travel within the state prison system. If Thomas had failed to file, the state prison system would never have had any opportunity to review the claim. However, by filing, Thomas gave the state an opportunity to hear the claim and, by appealing, Thomas gave the state the opportunity to reconsider its decision. Thomas received the benefit of the potential that the state would hear his grievance by waiving the procedural guidelines, which the state could have done if it wanted to avoid federal court. The state received the benefit of dealing with the case internally if it so desired. The defendants, however, argue that exhaustion also requires more, and specifically, that it requires compliance with state administrative deadlines. Yet such an outcome would extend our established precedent beyond its present boundaries.
18 In two similar statutory contexts requiring resort to state administrative procedures, the Supreme Court has specifically held that a plaintiff's failure to comply with state statutes of limitations cannot prevent the plaintiff from proceeding to federal court. 2 Both the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 require plaintiffs to present their grievances in the relevant state system before the plaintiff may initiate a federal suit. See 29 U.S.C. § 633(b) (ADEA); 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(c) (Title VII). In Oscar Mayer & Co. v. Evans, 441 U.S. 750, 99 S.Ct. 2066, 60 L.Ed.2d 609 (1979), the Supreme Court held that an ADEA plaintiff who had presented his grievance to the governing state agency after the state's statute of limitations had expired had nonetheless satisfied the ADEA's requirements and could proceed with his federal suit. See Oscar Mayer, 441 U.S. at 753, 99 S.Ct. 2066 ([T]he grievant is not required by [§ 633(b)] to commence the state proceedings within time limits specified by state law.). Similarly, in EEOC v. Commercial Office Products Co., 486 U.S. 107, 108 S.Ct. 1666, 100 L.Ed.2d 96 (1988), the Supreme Court held that a Title VII plaintiff's failure to comply with a state statute of limitations in presenting her grievance to the state agency was irrelevant in determining whether she could proceed to federal court. See id. at 123, 108 S.Ct. 1666 ([S]tate time limits for filing discrimination claims do not determine the applicable federal time limit.). 19 For both of those frameworks, the Supreme Court relied on three primary arguments to conclude that failure to comply with state time limits could not prevent the plaintiff from coming to federal court. All three arguments are applicable in the present case. First, the Court found in both instances that the absence of any mention in the statutes' text of any requirement of timeliness under state law indicated Congress's intent that state time requirements could not bar the federal claims. In both cases, the Court insisted that such a requirement could be imposed only by explicit mention. See Oscar Mayer, 441 U.S. at 759, 99 S.Ct. 2066 (In particular, there is no requirement [in the ADEA] that, in order to commence state proceedings and thereby preserve federal rights, the grievant must file with the State within whatever time limits are specified by state law.); Commercial Office Prods., 486 U.S. at 124, 108 S.Ct. 1666 (Title VII, like the ADEA, contains no express reference to timeliness under state law.). Second, the Court emphasized that state statutes of limitations should not serve as a bar to federal court `in a statutory scheme in which laymen, unassisted by trained lawyers, initiate the process.' Oscar Mayer, 441 U.S. at 761, 99 S.Ct. 2066 (quoting Love v. Pullman Co., 404 U.S. 522, 527, 92 S.Ct. 616, 30 L.Ed.2d 679 (1972)); accord Commercial Office Prods., 486 U.S. at 124, 108 S.Ct. 1666. Third, the Court reasoned that state procedural rules should not be able to prevent a federal court from remedying a harm that Congress sought to prevent. The requirement that plaintiffs first initiate state proceedings gave states a limited opportunity to resolve discrimination complaints, and [i]ndividuals should not be penalized if States decline, for whatever reason, to take advantage of these opportunities. Oscar Mayer, 441 U.S. at 761, 99 S.Ct. 2066; see also Commercial Office Prods., 486 U.S. at 123-24, 108 S.Ct. 1666 (recognizing that the filing provisions of the ADEA and Title VII are nearly identical and that the same policy considerations apply in each). 20 The latter two arguments unquestionably apply with equal force in the context of the PLRA. First, the prison grievant is generally the epitome of the lay person, unassisted by a trained lawyer, seeking to invoke the legal process. Further, if states may not use administrative time limits to defeat an ADEA or a Title VII claim, they should not be able to defeat a claim under the Civil Rights Act of 1871, Congress's preeminent declaration that state officials may not undermine federal law. A major factor motivating the expansion of federal jurisdiction through [the predecessor to 42 U.S.C. § 1983] was the belief of the 1871 Congress that the state authorities had been unable or unwilling to protect the constitutional rights of individuals or to punish those who violated these rights. Patsy v. Bd. of Regents of Florida, 457 U.S. 496, 505, 102 S.Ct. 2557, 73 L.Ed.2d 172 (1982) (refusing, absent explicit congressional instruction, to create an exhaustion requirement for § 1983 suits). If we were to create a rule that permitted states to defeat § 1983 suits with their administrative time limits, however, and thereby let unable or unwilling state authorities prevail over the constitutional rights of individuals, id., we would have undone what Congress wrought. These rationales, which the Supreme Court relied on to hold that compliance with state statutes of limitations is irrelevant to a plaintiff's ability to bring a federal claim, apply with equal or stronger force to claims under § 1983. 3 21 Thus the only question is whether the language of § 1997e, which prevents prisoners from challenging prison conditions until such administrative remedies as are available are exhausted, 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a), distinguishes the PLRA from the ADEA and Title VII in such a way as to permit state agencies to defeat federal claims. Title VII's filing requirement, after which the ADEA's was patterned, reads as follows: 22 In the case of an alleged unlawful employment practice occurring in a State, or political subdivision of a State, which has a State or local law prohibiting the unlawful employment practice alleged and establishing or authorizing a State or local authority to grant or seek relief from such practice or to institute criminal proceedings with respect thereto upon receiving notice thereof, no charge may be filed under subsection [(b)] of this section by the person aggrieved before the expiration of sixty days after proceedings have been commenced under the State or local law, unless such proceedings have been earlier terminated, provided that such sixty-day period shall be extended to one hundred and twenty days during the first year after the effective date of such State or local law. If any requirement for the commencement of such proceedings is imposed by a State or local authority other than a requirement of the filing of a written and signed statement of the facts upon which the proceeding is based, the proceeding shall be deemed to have been commenced for the purposes of this subsection at the time such statement is sent by registered mail to the appropriate State or local authority. 23 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(c). To be sure, as the Oscar Mayer court indicated, a requirement that a would-be federal plaintiff exhaust state remedies is different from a requirement that the plaintiff commence state proceedings. See Oscar Mayer, 441 U.S. at 761, 99 S.Ct. 2066. Accordingly, as Congress requires that an inmate exhaust available administrative remedies, 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a), the question is what exhaustion requires. 24 In a number of cases, the Supreme Court has suggested that exhaustion is the antonym of commencement. Whereas commencement requires the plaintiff to begin, exhaustion requires the plaintiff to finish. In Oscar Mayer, for example, the distinction between the ADEA's requirement and an exhaustion requirement focused not on any purported difference in the two requirements' power to defeat federal claims, but on the simple fact that 29 U.S.C. § 633(b) requires only that the grievant commence state proceedings. Oscar Mayer, 441 U.S. at 759, 99 S.Ct. 2066 (emphasis in original). Exhaustion, then, provides the flip side of that coin, requir[ing] the court to delay action until the administrative phase of the state proceedings is terminated. Gibson v. Berryhill, 411 U.S. 564, 574, 93 S.Ct. 1689, 36 L.Ed.2d 488 (1973) (emphasis added). Unlike the commencement requirement, which is crafted to give state agencies an opportunity to resolve a problem while federal action proceeds on a parallel track, see Oscar Mayer, 441 U.S. at 757, 99 S.Ct. 2066 (recognizing that ADEA set up concurrent rather than sequential state and federal administrative jurisdiction), exhaustion is a termination requirement, designed to keep federal courts out as long as the state administrative machinery is working to resolve the problem. Even the dissenters in Patsy v. Board of Regents of Florida, who argued that § 1983 included a judicially created exhaustion requirement for all plaintiffs, agreed that an exhaustion does not defeat federal-court jurisdiction, it merely defers it. Patsy, 457 U.S. at 532, 102 S.Ct. 2557 (Powell, J., dissenting). Thus when Congress imposed an exhaustion requirement in the PLRA, but imposed no other restrictions, it imposed a termination requirement. See, e.g., United States v. Wells, 519 U.S. 482, 495, 117 S.Ct. 921, 137 L.Ed.2d 107 (1997) ([W]e presume that Congress expects its statutes to be read in conformity with this Court's precedents.). 25 With the PLRA, Congress could have required more than an exhaustion requirement, but it chose not to. Congress could have, for example, required in § 1997e(a) that, In exhausting available administrative remedies, the prisoner shall comply with the prison's reasonable time limits for filing grievances. Untimely claims shall be deemed procedurally defaulted. Had Congress done so, the present case would be much easier. But Congress did not, and the Supreme Court has instructed that we are not to impose such requirements when Congress refuses. See Commercial Office Prods., 486 U.S. at 124, 108 S.Ct. 1666 (Title VII, like the ADEA, contains no express reference to timeliness under state law.); Patsy, 457 U.S. at 514, 102 S.Ct. 2557 (reasoning that legislatures, not courts, are to determine what consequences should attach to the failure to comply with procedural requirements of administrative proceedings); Oscar Mayer, 441 U.S. at 759, 99 S.Ct. 2066 (In particular, there is no requirement that, in order to commence state proceedings and thereby preserve federal rights, the grievant must file with the State within whatever time limits are specified by state law.). 26 To reach the contrary conclusion, we would have to impose a judicially created procedural default rule, going well beyond the exhaustion rule that Congress imposed with the PLRA and contravening the Supreme Court's explicit instructions in the Oscar Mayer line of cases. This may be a tempting and common mistake, but it is a mistake nonetheless, as Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 111 S.Ct. 2546, 115 L.Ed.2d 640 (1991), shows. In discussing a habeas petitioner who filed an untimely notice of appeal in state court, the Court in Coleman reasons, A habeas petitioner who has defaulted his federal claims in state court meets the technical requirements for exhaustion; there are no state remedies any longer `available' to him. Id. at 732, 111 S.Ct. 2546. That is, by filing the notice of appeal, even though untimely, the petitioner had exhausted his state remedies. The petitioner failed not because he had failed to exhaust his remedies, but because he had procedurally defaulted them. See id. ( In the absence of the independent and adequate state ground doctrine in federal habeas, habeas petitioners would be able to avoid the exhaustion by defaulting their federal claims in state court.) (emphasis added). Procedural default is thus distinct from the exhaustion requirement, an additional requirement added on top of exhaustion. 27 Although there may be an interplay between the two doctrines, O'Sullivan v. Boerckel, 526 U.S. 838, 848, 119 S.Ct. 1728, 144 L.Ed.2d 1 (1999), and they appear together when there is a procedural default at trial, on appeal, or on state collateral attack, Edwards v. Carpenter, 529 U.S. 446, 451, 120 S.Ct. 1587, 146 L.Ed.2d 518 (2000), the Supreme Court's habeas decisions make clear that they are different doctrines that impose different requirements. The judiciary created the procedural default rule to ensure that courts did not issue advisory opinions when an independent and adequate state ground supported a state court's judgment, and extended the rule into the habeas context only because a state prisoner is in custody pursuant to a judgment that would be rendered ineffective by a federal court's ruling. Coleman, 501 U.S. at 729-30, 111 S.Ct. 2546 (emphasis in original). This extension of the procedural default rule into the habeas context obviously cannot support its extension into exhaustion of prison administrative remedies, as we have never considered a state warden's decision on a grievance to be the equal of a full state-court judgment. Indeed, the Supreme Court's habeas decisions instruct that, whereas the procedural default doctrine requires a habeas petitioner to comply with reasonable state procedural rules, the exhaustion requirement requires that state prisoners ... give the state courts one full opportunity to resolve any constitutional issues by invoking one compete round of the's established appellate review process. Boerckel, 526 U.S. at 845, 119 S.Ct. 1728. This is precisely our holding here. 28 Thus the only ground for barring a federal § 1983 suit due to an untimely prison grievance is that we would otherwise render prison grievance procedures irrelevant. If a prisoner knows that he or she may file a federal suit by filing an untimely grievance, the argument goes, prisoners will have an incentive to bypass the prison grievance process by waiting until its deadline has passed, filing an untimely grievance, and then proceeding to federal court. Indeed, the Seventh Circuit appears to have relied on this policy argument in holding that an untimely grievance will bar a § 1983 suit. See Pozo v. McCaughtry, 286 F.3d 1022, 1025 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 537 U.S. 949, 123 S.Ct. 414, 154 L.Ed.2d 293 (2002). However, not only does this argument sweep aside the meaning of exhaustion, it is an argument that the Supreme Court specifically rejected in Oscar Mayer itself. There is [n]o reason why one would wish to forgo an available state remedy, the Court reasoned; [p]rior resort to the state remedy would not impair the availability of the federal remedy, for the two are supplementary, not mutually exclusive. Oscar Mayer, 441 U.S. at 764, 99 S.Ct. 2066. That is, permitting prisoners to file in federal court following an untimely grievance in noway creates an incentive to bypass state remedies, for potential litigants will still have every incentive to raise their grievance within the prison's timelines, because it is in the prison process that inmates will, for most practical purposes, receive their swiftest and most effective remedies. Those who bypass it will generally do so to their own disadvantage. In fact, the policy argument works in favor of the conclusion we reach here: prison administrators, knowing that their refusal to entertain grievances filed after certain deadlines will not protect them from subsequent litigation, will more likely take advantage of the opportunity to resolve the grievance that the PLRA has granted them. 4 29 Thus the PLRA's exhaustion requirement distinguishes the PLRA from the interpretations of Title VII and the ADEA, but not in a manner meaningful for this case. Exhaustion of state administrative remedies under the PLRA requires a plaintiff not only to bring his or her claim before the state, but to see it through to completion, appealing denials as permitted and participating in offered hearings. Exhaustion also requires a plaintiff to bring a grievance to the state before coming to federal court even when the state has made clear that it will not grant the relief requested. See Booth, 532 U.S. at 736, 121 S.Ct. 1819. But just as a state prison system's decision not to grant certain kinds of relief does not strip the federal courts of their power to grant that relief under § 1983, so too its decision not to grant relief in particular cases — whether for timeliness or for any other state procedural requirement — does not strip the federal courts of their power to do so. Thomas brought his grievance to the prison officials' attention, they refused to hear it, and he appealed their decision through each available level. That prison officials did not wish to address his complaint, as they prefer only to address complaints brought before them within thirty days, is irrelevant for our purposes. Thomas gave the state officers an opportunity, which is all that is required. We may not penalize Thomas simply because the prison does not wish to hear grievances more than thirty days after the incident. See Oscar Mayer, 441 U.S. at 761, 99 S.Ct. 2066. We therefore hold that a prisoner who has presented his or her grievance through one complete round of the prison process has exhausted the available administrative remedies under 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a), regardless of whether the prisoner complied with the grievance system's procedural requirements.