Opinion ID: 73326
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Futility and Inadequacy Doctrines

Text: Alexander’s next contention is that the BOP’s administrative remedies are futile and inadequate in his case because the BOP has no authority to award him monetary damages or to declare the Ensign Amendment unconstitutional. As a result, Alexander asserts that there were no administrative remedies “available” to him and that the mandatory exhaustion requirement of section 1997e(a) does not apply to his type of claims. We disagree for several reasons. First, Alexander’s complaint sought an injunction not only against the Ensign Amendment, but also against the BOP’s interpretation and implementation of that statute through its regulations and Program Statement. Even prior to the PLRA, this Court held that prisoners 8 As explained in Garrett, because Congress enacted PLRA as a rider to an appropriations bill, “floor debate is more indicative of legislative intent than it otherwise would be, especially where the floor statements in favor of the bill remain uncontested.” 127 F.3d at 1265 n.2. 8 seeking monetary damages and injunctive relief should exhaust administrative grievance procedures that were arguably futile and inadequate before filing a section 1983 action regarding prison conditions. Irwin v. Hawk, 40 F.3d 347, 348-49 (11th Cir. 1994). The Irwin Court acknowledged McCarthy’s holding “that a federal prisoner who initiates a Bivens claim solely for money damages need not exhaust the grievance procedure before seeking judicial review of his claim. 503 U.S. at ----, 112 S.Ct. at 1088.” Irwin, 40 F.3d at 348 (emphasis supplied). This Court in Irwin then noted that “[t]he Court in McCarthy, however, explicitly reserved ruling on whether an exhaustion of remedies requirement is appropriate in a case such as Irwin’s, where the inmate seeks both monetary and injunctive relief.” Id.9 This Court in Irwin then agreed with the Seventh Circuit’s conclusion that exhaustion should be required even if it appears futile, as follows: No doubt denial is the likeliest outcome but that is not sufficient reason for waiving the requirement of exhaustion. Lightening may strike: and even if it doesn’t, in denying relief the Bureau may give a statement of its reasons that is helpful to the district court in considering the merits of the claim. Green v. Meese, 875 F.2d 639, 641 (7th Cir. 1989). Irwin, 40 F.3d at 349. In reaching its conclusion, the Irwin Court relied on a previous decision, Caraballo-Sandoval v. Honsted, 35 F.3d 521, 524 (11th Cir. 1994), which also held that the district court properly dismissed the prisoner’s claim for failure to exhaust administrative 9 In Irwin, this Court quoted the Supreme Court’s footnote in McCarthy to this effect, as follows: Petitioner concedes that if his complaint contained a prayer for injunctive relief, exhaustion principles would apply differently. Were injunctive relief sought, the grievance procedure probably would be capable of producing the type of corrective action desired. Id. 9 remedies where the prisoner sought both monetary and injunctive relief. See Irwin, 40 F.3d at 348-49. Second, the judicially recognized futility and inadequacy exceptions do not survive the new mandatory exhaustion requirement of the PLRA. Exhaustion of administrative remedies may be either mandated by statute or imposed as a matter of judicial discretion. Congress now has mandated exhaustion in section 1997e(a) and there is no longer discretion to waive the exhaustion requirement. The Supreme Court has made clear that “[w]here Congress specifically mandates, exhaustion is required.” McCarthy v. Madigan, 503 U.S. 140, 144, 112 S. Ct. 1081, 1086, 117 L. Ed. 2d 291 (1992).10 Since exhaustion is now a pre-condition to suit, the courts cannot simply waive those requirements where they determine they are futile or inadequate. Such an interpretation would impose an enormous loophole in the PLRA, which Congress clearly did not intend. Mandatory exhaustion is not satisfied by a judicial conclusion that the requirement need not apply. Weinberger v. Salfi, 422 U.S. 749, 766, 95 S. Ct. 2457, 2467, 45 L. Ed. 2d 522 (1975) (holding that where exhaustion is a statutorily specified jurisdictional prerequisite, “the requirement . . . may not be dispensed with merely by a judicial conclusion of futility”). Alexander emphasizes that even though exhaustion is now mandatory, the PLRA still mandates exhaustion only when there is an “available” remedy. Since the BOP cannot award 10 In McCarthy, the Supreme Court noted that where Congress specifically mandates, a plaintiff must exhaust the administrative remedies available to him before he may file in federal court, but held that there was no specific mandate in the pre-PLRA section 1997e(a) context. 503 U.S. at 144; 112 S. Ct. at 1086. See also McNeil v. United States, 508 U.S. 106, 111, 113 S. Ct. 1980, 1983, 124 L. Ed. 2d 21 (1993) (in a claim by a prisoner under the Federal Torts Claims Act, holding that the language that an “action shall not be instituted” until a final agency judgment mandated exhaustion before the filing of a case). 10 money damages or declare the Ensign Amendment unconstitutional, Alexander argues that there is no adequate remedy and thus no “available” remedy. However, the term “administrative remedies as are available” does not mean an adequate administrative remedy for several reasons. First, the pre-PLRA statute required “exhaustion of such plain, speedy, and effective administrative remedies as are available,” 42 U.S.C. § 1997(e)(a)(1) (1994) (amended 1996) (emphasis supplied). Indeed, in McCarthy, the Supreme Court explicitly relied on this statute’s requirement of “effective administrative remedies” in concluding that a prisoner seeking money damages, which could not be awarded by the BOP’s Administrative Remedy Program (“ARP”), would not have an adequate administrative remedy available and therefore would not be required to exhaust administrative remedies. 503 U.S. at 150; 112 S. Ct. at 1089. In stark contrast, the current PLRA section 1997e(a) does not condition the exhaustion requirement on the administrative remedies being “plain, speedy, and effective.” Instead, section 1997e(a) merely provides for exhaustion of “such administrative remedies as are available.” 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a) (1996). The removal of the qualifiers “plain, speedy, and effective” from the PLRA’s mandatory exhaustion requirement indicates that Congress no longer wanted courts to examine the effectiveness of administrative remedies but rather to focus solely on whether an administrative remedy program is “available” in the prison involved. Secondly, Alexander’s proffered construction of “remedies as are available” would require courts to evaluate each cause of action and each type of relief sought in each prisoner’s complaint and determine whether the BOP can grant any adequate relief. This is not what the PLRA provides or what Congress intended.11 We find that the term “available” in section 11 Congress amended section 1997e(a) largely in response to concerns about the heavy volume of frivolous prison litigation in the federal courts. See, e.g., 141 Cong. Rec. H14078-02, 11 1997e(a) is used to acknowledge that not all prisons actually have administrative remedy programs. Some state penal institutions may not have an administrative remedy program to address prison conditions, and thus there are no “available” administrative remedies to exhaust. Section 1997e(a) permits these prisoners to pursue their claims directly in federal court. However, here, the BOP has an available administrative remedy program. Finally, Alexander cites several post-PLRA decisions that did not require a prisoner to pursue a remedy under the BOP’s ARP or a state’s prison grievance program because those courts determined that there was no adequate remedy. Garrett v. Hawk, 127 F.3d 1263 (10th Cir. 1997) (Bivens claim by federal inmate); Jackson v. DeTella, 998 F. Supp. 901, 904 (N.D. Ill. 1998) (claim by a state inmate); Sanders v. Elyea, 1998 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1705 at  (N.D. Ill. 1998)(same), and Lacey v. C.S.P. Solano Medical Staff, 990 F. Supp. 1199, 1205 (E.D. Cal. 1997)(same). These decisions do not persuade us to accept Alexander’s position. None of these cases discusses Congress’s removal of the pre-PLRA condition that available remedies be “plain, speedy, and effective” from section 1997e(a). Also, only Garrett examines the legislative history of the PLRA, but even Garrett overlooks the guidance the legislative history of the PLRA offers for determining Congress’s intent in amending section 1997e(a) to require exhaustion of H14105 (daily ed. Dec. 6, 1995). Congress desired “to wrest control of our prisons from the lawyers and the inmates and return that control to competent administrators appointed to look out for society’s interests as well as the legitimate needs of prisoners.” 141 Cong. Rec. S1440801, S14418 (daily ed. Sept. 27, 1995). Prisoners’ complaints about prison conditions are often filed pro se and generally contain a lengthy layman’s recitation of complaints about the prison without articulating clearly the legal causes of action in issue and necessitating significant expenditure of judicial resources to review and refine the nature of the legal claims in a prisoner’s complaint. With these considerations in mind, Congress mandated that prisoners exhaust administrative remedies and eliminated courts’ conducting case-by-case inquiries until after a prisoner has presented his claims to a particular administrative remedy program, which often helps focus and clarify the issues for the court. 12 “such administrative remedies as are available.” In any event, Garrett, Jackson, and Lacey involved claims for only monetary relief, and Sanders does not specify the type of relief sought. In contrast, Alexander seeks both monetary and injunctive relief. Since both the plain language and the legislative history of the PLRA support the result here, we decline to follow these decisions. Requiring mandatory exhaustion if a prison has an available administrative grievance procedure is consistent with this Court’s longstanding recognition of the usefulness of exhaustion requirements. In Kobleur v. Group Hospitalization & Medical Services, Inc., 954 F.2d 705 (11th Cir. 1992), this Court set out these seven policies favoring exhaustion: (1) to avoid premature interruption of the administrative process; (2) to let the agency develop the necessary factual background upon which decisions should be based; (3) to permit the agency to exercise its discretion or apply its expertise; (4) to improve the efficiency of the administrative process; (5) to conserve scarce judicial resources, since the complaining party may be successful in vindicating rights in the administrative process and the courts may never have to intervene ; (6) to give the agency a chance to discover and correct its own errors; and (7) to avoid the possibility that “frequent and deliberate flouting of the administrative processes could weaken the effectiveness of an agency by encouraging people to ignore its procedures.” Id. at 712 (citations omitted). Each policy is served by requiring Alexander to exhaust remedies where the BOP has an available administrative remedy procedure. For example, the BOP frequently interprets and implements a general statute through more specific regulations and program statements. In this case, the Ensign Amendment does not define the term “sexually explicit,” and the BOP adopted regulations and a Program Statement defining that term and applying it to various publications. During the administrative grievance process, the BOP could review its interpretation and correct any mistakes it might find before the federal judiciary became involved. Even if the BOP decided not to revise its interpretation and 13 plan for implementing the Ensign Amendment, the BOP at least would be able to explain why it believed its interpretation properly construed the Ensign Amendment and satisfied constitutional standards. Secondly, even if the complaining prisoner seeks only money damages, the prisoner may be successful in having the BOP halt the infringing practice, which at least freezes the time frame for the prisoner’s damages. Thirdly, in constitutional challenges, the BOP could create a record explaining its legitimate penological justifications for the new restrictions and for the BOP’s implementing regulations. Even if the BOP did not grant relief, a prisoner’s resort to the administrative process is not futile, but allows grievances to be heard and a record to be created for review in any subsequent proceedings.12 Courts not only conserve time and effort as a result of any factfinding during the ARP proceedings, but also benefit from the BOP’s expertise in interpreting its own regulations and applying them to the facts before it. 12 Indeed, the need for a more fully developed record is mainly what divided the court in Amatel v. Reno, ---F.3d--- , (D.C. Cir. Sept. 15, 1998), a recent decision in which a divided court in the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the Ensign Amendment and regulations implementing it. For example, the panel did not agree about how broadly the prohibition of materials would extend under the BOP’s Program Statement. The majority relies on the list of permitted publications, including National Geographic and Victoria’s Secret Catalog, to argue that the BOP would be unlikely to exclude “fringe” materials which arguably “feature nudity” within the definitions set out in the BOP regulations but which are considered to have social, literary, or artistic value. Id. at . However, the dissent takes the position that the ban imposed by the regulations is so broad prison wardens may not have discretion to distribute works that “speak[] intelligently to mankind,” such as Michelangelo’s David, to inmates. Id. at . The dissent also expresses concern that the record on the penological justifications for the Ensign Amendment and regulations implementing it was “too Spartan” and therefore declines to go along with the majority in finding a link between the restrictions on magazines and the rehabilitation of inmates. Id. at - (Wald, J., dissenting). 14 In summary, we conclude that section 1997e(a) requires Alexander to submit his claims for monetary and injunctive relief to the BOP’s available prison grievance program, even if the relief offered by that program does not appear to be “plain, speedy, and effective,” before filing those claims in federal court. The judicially created futility and inadequacy doctrines do not survive the PLRA’s mandatory exhaustion requirement.