Wallace v. Baldwin

Dist. Ct. erred in granting defendants-prison officials’ motion for summary judgment in plaintiffs=prisoner’s section 1983 action, alleging that prison’s policy of housing two inmates in single-person cell violated their 8th Amendment rights. While Dist. Ct. based dismissal on belief that plaintiffs had failed to exhaust their administrative remedies by neglecting to file internal grievance that raised double-cell issue prior to filing instant lawsuit, remand was required because Dist. Ct. failed to consider threshold issue as to whether exhaustion was required, as described in Ross, 578 U.S. 643, where plaintiffs provided some evidence that filing grievance was “dead end,” because other inmates who raised same issue had obtained no response from defendants. Thus, on remand, Dist. Ct. must allow limited discovery to determine whether exhaustion of administrative remedies was not required because no such remedies were “available” to plaintiffs because filing grievance would have been useless act. If so, defendants’ summary judgment motion should be denied. However, if Dist. Ct. finds that administrative remedies were available, then exhaustion requirement would apply to plaintiffs.