There is no dispute in a new Supreme Court case that a four-year-old federal law ordinarily requires state and federal inmates to take their complaints about prison conditions through the prison system's grievance process before filing suit in federal court.
But the lower federal courts disagree sharply over the question that the justices agreed today to decide: whether inmates faced with an administrative process that does not provide the type of relief they are seeking are still required to make a predictably futile effort.
The court accepted an appeal from a Pennsylvania inmate who is seeking thousands of dollars in damages for what he describes as a pattern of assault by prison guards that left him with a dislocated shoulder and other injuries. Pennsylvania's 'consolidated inmate grievance system' does not compensate inmates.
The inmate, Timothy Booth, went directly to federal court with his complaint. But two lower federal courts dismissed his case on the ground that he should have gone through the inmate grievance system first, as required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1996.
The purpose of that law was to limit the number of prison cases in federal court. It provides that 'no action shall be brought with respect to prison conditions' by an inmate in either state or federal prison 'until such administrative remedies as are available are exhausted.'
The 1996 version replaced an earlier law that had required exhaustion of 'such plain, speedy and effective remedies as are available.' Some lower courts have interpreted the deletion of the words 'plain, speedy and effective' to mean that Congress intended to deflect prisoner suits from federal court even if the available remedies outside of court were ineffective. Mr. Booth argued that the exhaustion requirement should not be interpreted to demand an exercise in futility.
But the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, said that considerations of 'federalism and efficiency' meant that the exhaustion requirement applied without exception. Mr. Booth could not take his complaint back to the prison system because the 15-day time limit for bringing a complaint there had long since passed.
The Supreme Court did not disclose today why it chose the Pennsylvania case, Booth v. Churner, No. 99-1964, as its vehicle for deciding the issue.
In his appeal, Mr. Booth said the case deserved the court's attention 'because it involves the interpretation of a federal statute at issue in virtually all prisoner civil rights litigation.'
The Prison Litigation Reform Act applies to cases that deal with 'prison conditions.' One question that Mr. Booth raised in the lower courts, but did not make part of his Supreme Court appeal, is whether the law even applies to suits such as his, which challenges particular instances of excessive force rather than prison conditions in general.