Jeffrey Mills v. K. Mitchell ( 2020 )

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FEB 6 2020
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
JEFFREY MILLS, No. 18-15531
Plaintiff-Appellant, D.C. No. 4:16-cv-05095-HSG
v.
MEMORANDUM*
K. MITCHELL, et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of California
Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr., District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted October 25, 2019
San Francisco, California
Before: MELLOY,** BYBEE, and N.R. SMITH, Circuit Judges.
Jeffrey Mills appeals the district court’s grant of summary judgment for
failure to exhaust administrative remedies under the Prison Litigation Reform Act
(PLRA), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a). With jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we
reverse.
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
**
The Honorable Michael J. Melloy, United States Circuit Judge for the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, sitting by designation.
We review a district court’s legal rulings on administrative exhaustion de
novo. Albino v. Baca, 747 F.3d 1162, 1171 (9th Cir. 2014). The text of the PLRA
requires that a prisoner exhaust available remedies before bringing an action
related to prison conditions. 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a). As such, “an inmate is
required to exhaust those, but only those, grievance procedures that are capable of
use to obtain some relief for the action complained of.” Ross v. Blake, 136 S. Ct.
1850, 1859 (2016) (quotation omitted). Despite being officially available to an
inmate, an administrative remedy is not capable of use to obtain relief when: (1)
the procedure “operates as a simple dead end—with officers unable or consistently
unwilling to provide any relief to aggrieved inmates,” id., (2) where it is “so
opaque that it becomes, practically speaking, incapable of use,” id., or (3) “when
prison administrators thwart inmates from taking advantage of a grievance process
through machination, misrepresentation, or intimidation,” id. at 1860.
The record shows that, while Mills was imprisoned at San Quentin, an
officer improperly removed him from his job. Mills pursued relief through the
three-level administrative grievance system of the California Department of
Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). He filed a grievance about the removal
and, subsequently, additional grievances alleging retaliation for filing the first
grievance and seeking his employment records. Only three of his grievances are at
2
issue on appeal: those ending in 1751, 2514, and 2839.1 Multiple times, CDCR
failed to send proper notices to Mills and exceeded the regulatory deadlines for
issuing decisions. At the time Mills brought his suit, he had pursued exhaustion of
his administrative remedies for roughly 10 months without a final decision.
The district court found Mills failed to exhaust available administrative
remedies. On appeal, Mills relies on our precedent and argues CDCR’s delay and
failure to provide proper notice effectively made remedies unavailable to him.
Mills also argues he properly exhausted grievance number 2839, which the district
court did not address. We agree with Mills.
On de novo review, we find CDCR’s handling of the grievances effectively
made remedies unavailable to Mills. See generally Ross, 136 S. Ct. at 1859–60;
Andres v. Marshall, 867 F.3d 1076, 1078–79 (9th Cir. 2017). CDCR’s repeated
failure to meet the statutorily required deadlines and failure to provide proper
notice made remedies effectively unavailable to Mills. See Andres, 867 F.3d at
1079. Defendants cannot meet their burden to establish otherwise. See Albino,
747 F.3d at 1172. Further, the district court incorrectly disregarded grievance
number 2839 as being unrelated to this action. The parties agree that this was in
error. For these reasons, we reverse and remand as to all three grievances at issue
1
The district court also considered a fourth grievance, number 3254, which
Mills does not raise on appeal.
3
on appeal.
REVERSED.
4