Civil Rights — exhaustion

U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit

Civil

Civil Rights — exhaustion

Where jail officials misled a prisoner about the availability of a grievance procedure, the district court improperly dismissed his civil rights suit for failure to exhaust administrative remedies.

“Although ‘when administrative procedures are clearly laid out … an inmate must comply with them in order to exhaust his remedies,’ Pavey v. Conley, 663 F.3d 899, 905 (7th Cir. 2011), we have in this case, as in Roberts v. Neal, 745 F.3d 232 (7th Cir. 2014), a muddle created by the people running the jail. When a jail official invites noncompliance with a procedure the prisoner is not required to follow the procedure. Curtis v. Timberlake, 436 F.3d 709, 712 (7th Cir. 2005). When jail personnel mislead inmates about how to invoke the procedure the inmates can’t be blamed for failing to invoke it. Dillon v. Rogers, 596 F.3d 260, 268 (5th Cir. 2010); Nunez v. Duncan, 591 F.3d 1217, 1224–25 (9th Cir. 2010); Brown v. Croak, 312 F.3d 109, 112–13 (3d Cir. 2002).”

Reversed and Remanded.

13-3602 Swisher v. Porter County Sheriff’s Department

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana, Nuechterlein, Mag. J., Posner, J.