Home Forums FEDERAL BUREAU PRISON Supreme Court Gives PLRA Prisoner a Procedural Win – Update for June 26, 2025



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      Kris Marker
      Keymaster

      We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

      PLRA EXHAUSTION MAY BE A JURY QUESTION, SCOTUS RULES

      Prisoners know that virtually any lawsuit brought against the Federal Bureau of Prisons other than a habeas corpus action is subject to the procedural straitjacket of the Prison Litigation Reform Act. The PLRA, among other things, makes exhaustion of all available administrative remedies a jurisdictional requirement, meaning courts cannot waive the requirement because it is futile (which it almost always is) or inconvenient (which it invariably is).

      But what happens when a prison refuses to give the inmate access to the remedy system?

      The Supreme Court last week sided with Michigan state prisoner Kyle Richards, holding that a jury—not a judge—must consider his claim that a corrections officer destroyed his sexual harassment complaints, making it impossible for Kyle to use the prison’s remedy process.

      Exhaustion questions are usually decided by a judge. But here, the high court ruled, a jury must decide whether the CO’s action made the remedy process “unavailable,” because that question is bound up with the merits of Kyle’s claim.

      Kyle sued the CO for violating his constitutional rights, including his First Amendment right to file grievances. The CO responded that Kyle had failed to exhaust available grievance procedures as required by the PLRA. “The parties agree that the exhaustion and First Amendment issues are intertwined, because both depend on whether [the CO] did in fact destroy Richards’s grievances and retaliate against him… [T]he usual practice of the federal courts in cases of intertwinement is to send common issues to the jury. Because nothing in the PLRA suggests Congress intended to depart from that practice here, we hold that parties are entitled to a jury trial on PLRA exhaustion when that issue is intertwined with the merits of a claim protected by the Seventh Amendment.”

      “The usual federal court practice in cases of intertwinement is to send common issues to the jury, and nothing in the PLRA suggests Congress intended to depart from that practice,” the majority said.

      Where a prisoner is unable to exhaust remedies (a fairly common occurrence, not so much due to inmate sloth as it is to unduly restrictive procedures and deadlines imposed by the prison administration), the decision suggests that a canny litigation strategy may be to frame the effective denial of the grievance procedure as a constitutional violation (where such a claim can colorably be made). Any complaint that gets the PLRA to a jury rather than to a summary dismissal increases the gravitas of the lawsuit and the odds that the defendants will seek a settlement.

      The PLRA is notorious for having tilted the playing favor strongly in favor of the prison administration.  Any decision that evens up the procedural pitch, even a bit, is welcome.

      Perttu v. Richards, Case No. 23-1324, 2025 U.S. LEXIS 2380 (June 18, 2025)

      – Thomas L. Root

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