Opinion ID: 794148
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Exhaustion Requirements

Text: 12 On appeal, the City defendants again argue that the plaintiffs failed to exhaust all available administrative remedies and that the district court should therefore have dismissed the action instead of granting the declaratory judgment to the plaintiffs and ordering prospective relief.
The PLRA provides in pertinent part that: 13 No action shall be brought with respect to prison conditions under section 1983 of this title, or any other Federal law, by a prisoner confined in any jail, prison, or other correctional facility until such administrative remedies as are available are exhausted. 14 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a). In Porter v. Nussle, 534 U.S. 516, 122 S.Ct. 983, 152 L.Ed.2d 12 (2002), the Supreme Court held that the PLRA's exhaustion requirement applies to all prisoners seeking redress for prison circumstances or occurrences, id. at 520, 122 S.Ct. 983, irrespective of whether those conditions are general to all prisoners or affect only one prisoner in particular. See id. at 532, 122 S.Ct. 983. Previously, in Booth v. Churner, 532 U.S. 731, 121 S.Ct. 1819, 149 L.Ed.2d 958 (2001), the Supreme Court noted that the PLRA required exhaustion if available administrative process had the ability to provide some relief for the action complained of (emphasis added), even if grievance procedures could not provide the relief sought. Id. at 738-39, 121 S.Ct. 1819. If no administrative remedies are available, however, then the PLRA does not require exhaustion. Id. at 736 n. 4, 121 S.Ct. 1819 (Without the possibility of some relief, the administrative officers would presumably have no authority to act on the subject of the complaint, leaving the inmate with nothing to exhaust.); see also Mojias v. Johnson, 351 F.3d 606, 609 (2d Cir.2003) ([The PLRA] clearly does not require a prisoner to exhaust administrative remedies that do not address the subject matter of his complaint.) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). 15 Although the PLRA establishes a mandatory exhaustion requirement, it does not create a jurisdictional predicate to our ability to hear the appeal. Richardson v. Goord, 347 F.3d 431, 434 (2d Cir.2003). Therefore, [t]he failure to exhaust available administrative remedies is an affirmative defense . . . [that] is waiveable. Johnson v. Testman, 380 F.3d 691, 695 (2d Cir.2004); accord Hemphill v. New York, 380 F.3d 680, 686 (2d Cir.2004). 16 In rejecting the defendants' argument that exhaustion was required, the district court relied on two alternative grounds: that administrative remedies were not available and that, in any event, the defendants had waived the affirmative defense of non-exhaustion. With respect to the PLRA's exhaustion requirements, we agree with the district court as to the second ground and therefore need not and do not address the first. 17 As noted, in 1996 the City defendants opposed State defendant Mills's motion to dismiss the complaint based on the plaintiffs' alleged failure to exhaust administrative remedies. The City defendants argued that although the PLRA exhaustion requirement may, ultimately, be decisive, plaintiffs raise issues that, at this time, appear to be outside the jurisdiction of the Department of Correction. City Defs.' Mem. of Law in Opp. to State Def.'s Mot. to Dismiss at 3, Handberry v. Thompson, No. 96 Civ. 6161 (S.D.N.Y. Nov.12, 1996). The City defendants argued to the district court that it should dismiss the motion without prejudice pending discovery which, they contended, would reveal whether any alleged problems with the delivery of educational services to incarcerated persons in the custody of the Department of Correction are solely attributable to the Department of Correction, [in which case] the matter would be grievable. Id. On May 28, 1997, the district court denied Mills's motion to dismiss. 18 Some two years later, in November 1999, the City defendants cross-moved for summary judgment on the ground that the plaintiffs had failed to exhaust administrative remedies. In their arguments to the district court, they asserted that prison grievance procedures were available based on a Department of Corrections Directive issued in 1985. See City Defs.' Summary Judgment Br. at 11, Handberry v. Thompson, No. 96 CV 6161 (S.D.N.Y. Dec.22, 1999). This document, written and issued by the DOC, was available to the City Defendants before any discovery took place. And the district court noted that the director of DOC's Inmate Grievance Program concluded that the inmates could have filed an inmate grievance concerning access to school based upon his review[ of] paragraphs 12-22 of the complaint. Handberry v. Thompson, No. 96 CV 6161, 2003 WL 194205, at ; 2003 U.S. Dist. Lexis 1220, at  (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 28, 2003). 19 By opposing Mills's motion on the grounds that there were no relevant available administrative proceedings, the City defendants waived or conceded the inapplicability of the non-exhaustion defense with respect to prison grievance procedures that were apparent without discovery. The grounds upon which the City defendants asserted a non-exhaustion defense in 1999 were based on information that was available to them prior to any discovery taking place. By asserting in 1996 that there were no available prison grievance procedures based on the same information, the City defendants either waived any such claim or conceded that it was not available to the plaintiffs. 20 This is not a purely technical matter. Had the City defendants asserted in 1996 that administrative proceedings were available, the plaintiffs might have sought to exhaust any such proceedings before timely returning to federal court. The plaintiffs were entitled to rely, instead, on the City defendants' assertion that, barring the emergence of new information during discovery, the plaintiffs had no administrative process available to exhaust. The City defendants were not entitled to concede at the beginning of the litigation that prison grievance procedures were not available only to assert the contrary three years later based on information available to them from the outset. 21 We therefore conclude that the City defendants waived or conceded the exhaustion arguments that they make to us now. 2
22 The City defendants also assert that the plaintiffs should have exhausted administrative remedies with respect to their federal claims pursuant to the IDEA, the ADA, and section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. It is well settled that the IDEA requires an aggrieved party to exhaust all administrative remedies before bringing a civil action in federal or state court . . . . J.S. v. Attica Cent. Sch., 386 F.3d 107, 112 (2d Cir.2004), cert. denied, 544 U.S. 968, 125 S.Ct. 1727, 161 L.Ed.2d 616 (2005). The [IDEA administrative review] process includes review by an impartial due process hearing officer and an appeal from that hearing. Id. The [IDEA's] exhaustion requirement also applies where plaintiffs seek relief under other federal statutes when relief is also available under the IDEA. Id.; see also 20 U.S.C. § 1415( l ). 23 We have not yet ruled on whether the IDEA's exhaustion requirements are subject to waiver. In Polera v. Board of Education, 288 F.3d 478 (2d Cir.2002), the appellant admitted that she had failed to exhaust available IDEA administrative remedies. Id. at 481. We noted our recogni[tion] that the IDEA's exhaustion requirement does not apply in situations in which exhaustion would be futile because administrative procedures do not provide adequate remedies. Id. at 488 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). However, we concluded that absent an applicable exception, id., a plaintiff's failure to exhaust IDEA administrative remedies deprived the court of subject matter jurisdiction. Id. at 483, 488-90. 24 We need not decide today whether the defendants' waiver of the non-exhaustion defense would constitute such an exception. IDEA exhaustion in the instant case is excused under the futility exception for challenges addressing systemic issues. See J.S., 386 F.3d at 112. 25 In J.S., the plaintiffs brought a claim in which they alleged that they had been denied a free appropriate public education under the IDEA, the Rehabilitation Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and New York law. Id. at 110. We noted that [t]he complaint was styled as a class action, and the district court described it as containing `complain[ts] of wrongdoing that [are] inherent in the program itself and not directed at any individual child.' Id. at 110 (second alteration added). [T]he plaintiffs' problems could not have been remedied by administrative bodies because the framework and procedures for assessing and placing students in appropriate educational programs were at issue, or because the nature and volume of complaints were incapable of correction by the administrative hearing process. Id. at 114. We therefore concluded that IDEA exhaustion was not required. Id. Unlike challenges with respect to the content of a particular student's Individualized Education Plan (IEP), J.S. addressed a total failure to prepare and implement [IEPs]. Id. at 115. 26 Similarly here, the plaintiffs challenge the DOE's and DOC's actions with respect to providing educational services to all entitled inmates at Rikers Island. As we concluded in J.S., individual administrative remedies would be insufficient to address the defendants' failure to provide the service required by the IDEA to all relevant inmates. See id. at 112. The purposes of exhaustion — to allow[] for the exercise of discretion and educational expertise by state and local agencies, id. (quoting Polera, 288 F.3d at 487) — are unavailing where the alleged issue is the absence of any services whatsoever. Id. at 114-15. As to the plaintiffs' claim, then, exhaustion is futile, and administrative remedies are effectively unavailable. 3 We therefore conclude that the plaintiffs' failure to exhaust administrative remedies as required by section 1415(f)-(g), (i) for IDEA claims (and ADA and Rehabilitation Act claims for overlapping relief that would also be available under the IDEA as per section 1415( l )) does not bar our subject matter jurisdiction over this suit.