8th Amendment Violation-“Double-ceiling” Policy

Listen to this article

7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Corrie Wallace v. John Baldwin

Case No.: 21-1883

Officials: Wood, St. Eve, and Kirsch Circuit Judges.

Focus: 8th Amendment Violation-“Double-ceiling” Policy

Plaintiffs Wallace and Santos are inmates at Menard Correctional Center in Chester, Illinois. They sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that Menard’s “double-ceiling” policy of housing two inmates in single-person cells violated their Eighth Amendment rights. Defendants John Baldwin, Rob Jeffreys, Jacqueline Lashbrook, Alex Jones, Jeffery Hutchinson, and Kimberly Butler (collectively, “Defendants”), among others not party to this appeal, moved for summary judgment. They argued that Plaintiffs had failed to exhaust their administrative remedies under the Prison Litigation Reform Act (“PLRA”), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e. The district court held an evidentiary hearing, see Pavey v. Conley (“Pavey I”), 544 F.3d 739, 742 (7th Cir. 2008), found that Santos had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies before filing suit, and granted summary judgment for Defendants on that issue. The court therefore dismissed all of Santos’s claims. The court further dismissed Wallace’s claims against any defendants who were not working at Menard at the time he filed his complaint for failure to exhaust.

Because the district court made these decisions without first considering the threshold question of whether exhaustion was required, as described in the Supreme Court’s decision in Ross v. Blake, 578 U.S. 632, 643 (2016), the court reverses and remands for consideration of this issue. The court however affirms the district court’s factual findings from the Pavey hearing, which were not clearly erroneous.

Affirmed, Reversed, And Remanded.

Decided 12/14/22

Full Text