WOODFORD et al. v. NGO

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81 OCTOBER TERM, 2005
Syllabus
WOODFORD et al. v. NGO
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for
the ninth circuit
No. 05–416. Argued March 22, 2006—Decided June 22, 2006
The Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PLRA) requires a prisoner to
exhaust any available administrative remedies before challenging prison
conditions in federal court. 42 U. S. C. § 1997e(a). Respondent filed a
grievance with California prison officials about his prison conditions, but
it was rejected as untimely under state law. He subsequently sued
petitioner officials under § 1983 in the Federal District Court, which
granted petitioners’ motion to dismiss on the ground that respondent
had not fully exhausted his administrative remedies under § 1997e(a).
Reversing, the Ninth Circuit held that respondent had exhausted those
remedies because none remained available to him.
Held: The PLRA’s exhaustion requirement requires proper exhaustion of
administrative remedies. Pp. 87–103.
(a) Petitioners claim that a prisoner must complete the administrative
review process in accordance with applicable procedural rules, including
deadlines, as a precondition to bringing suit in federal court, but re
spondent contends that § 1997e(a) allows suit once administrative reme
dies are no longer available, regardless of the reason. To determine
the correct interpretation, the Court looks for guidance to both adminis
trative and habeas corpus law, where exhaustion is an important doc
trine. Administrative law requires proper exhaustion of administrative
remedies, which “means using all steps that the agency holds out, and
doing so properly.” Pozo v. McCaughtry, 286 F. 3d 1022, 1024. Habeas
law has substantively similar rules, though its terminology is different.
Pp. 87–93.
(b) Given this background, the Court is persuaded that the PLRA
requires proper exhaustion. Pp. 93–99.
(1) By referring to “such administrative remedies as are available,”
§ 1997e(a)’s text strongly suggests “exhausted” means what it means in
administrative law. P. 93.
(2) Construing § 1997e(a) to require proper exhaustion also serves
the PLRA’s goals. It gives prisoners an effective incentive to make full
use of the prison grievance process, thus providing prisons with a fair
opportunity to correct their own errors. It reduces the quantity of
prisoner suits. And it improves the quality of those suits that are filed
because proper exhaustion often results in creation of an administrative

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Syllabus
record helpful to the court. In contrast, respondent’s interpretation
would make the PLRA’s exhaustion scheme totally ineffective, since ex
haustion’s benefits can be realized only if the prison grievance system is
given a fair opportunity to consider the grievance. That cannot happen
unless the grievant complies with the system’s critical procedural rules.
Respondent’s arguments that his interpretation would filter out frivo
lous claims are unpersuasive. Pp. 93–96.
(3) As interpreted by respondent, the PLRA exhaustion require
ment would be unprecedented. No statute or case purports to require
exhaustion while at the same time allowing a party to bypass deliber
ately the administrative process by flouting the agency’s procedural
rules. None of his models is apt. He first suggests that the PLRA
requirement was patterned on habeas law as it existed between 1963
and 1977 when, under Fay v. Noia, 372 U. S. 391, 438, a federal habeas
claim could be procedurally defaulted only if the prisoner deliberately
bypassed state remedies. That would be fanciful, however. The
PLRA was enacted contemporaneously with the Antiterrorism and Ef
fective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which gave federal habeas review a
structure markedly different from what existed before 1977. Further
more, respondent’s interpretation would not duplicate that scheme, for
it would permit a prisoner to bypass deliberately administrative review
with no risk of sanction. Respondent next suggests that the PLRA
exhaustion requirement is patterned on § 14(b) of the Age Discrimina
tion in Employment Act of 1967 and § 706(e) of Title VII of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964, but neither provision is in any sense an exhaustion
provision. Pp. 96–99.
(c) Respondent’s remaining arguments regarding § 1997e(a)’s inter
pretation are also unconvincing. Pp. 99–103.
403 F. 3d 620, reversed and remanded.
Alito, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J.,
and Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas, JJ., joined. Breyer, J., filed an
opinion concurring in the judgment, post, p. 103. Stevens, J., filed a dis
senting opinion, in which Souter and Ginsburg, JJ., joined, post, p. 104.
Jennifer G. Perkell, Deputy Attorney General of Califor
nia, argued the cause for petitioners. With her on the briefs
were Bill Lockyer, Attorney General, Manuel M. Madeiros,
State Solicitor General, James M. Humes, Chief Assistant
Attorney General, Frances T. Grunder, Senior Assistant At
torney General, and Thomas S. Patterson, Supervising Dep
uty Attorney General.

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83 Cite as: 548 U. S. 81 (2006)
Opinion of the Court
Dan Himmelfarb argued the cause for the United States
as amicus curiae urging reversal. With him on the brief
were Solicitor General Clement, Assistant Attorney Gen
eral Keisler, Deputy Solicitor General Garre, and Barbara
L. Herwig.
Meir Feder argued the cause for respondent. With him
on the brief were Charles R. A. Morse and Donald B. Ayer.*
Justice Alito delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents the question whether a prisoner can
satisfy the Prison Litigation Reform Act’s exhaustion re
quirement, 42 U. S. C. § 1997e(a), by filing an untimely or oth
erwise procedurally defective administrative grievance or
*A brief of amici curiae urging reversal was filed for the State of New
York et al. by Eliot Spitzer, Attorney General of New York, Caitlin J.
Halligan, Solicitor General, Robert H. Easton, Deputy Solicitor General,
and Richard Dearing, Assistant Solicitor General, and by the Attorneys
General for their respective jurisdictions as follows: Troy King of Ala
bama, Terry Goddard of Arizona, Mike Beebe of Arkansas, John W. Suth
ers of Colorado, Carl C. Danberg of Delaware, Robert J. Spagnoletti of the
District of Columbia, Thurbert E. Baker of Georgia, Mark J. Bennett of
Hawaii, Lawrence G. Wasden of Idaho, Lisa Madigan of Illinois, Thomas J.
Miller of Iowa, Phill Kline of Kansas, Thomas F. Reilly of Massachusetts,
Michael A. Cox of Michigan, Jeremiah W. (Jay) Nixon of Missouri, Mike
McGrath of Montana, Jon Bruning of Nebraska, George J. Chanos of Ne
vada, Wayne Stenehjem of North Dakota, Jim Petro of Ohio, W. A. Drew
Edmondson of Oklahoma, Hardy Myers of Oregon, Thomas W. Corbett,
Jr., of Pennsylvania, Henry McMaster of South Carolina, Greg Abbott of
Texas, Mark L. Shurtleff of Utah, William H. Sorrell of Vermont, Judith
Williams Jagdmann of Virginia, Kerry E. Drue of the Virgin Islands, and
Rob McKenna of Washington.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the American
Bar Association by Michael S. Greco; for the American Civil Liberties
Union et al. by Margo Schlanger, David C. Fathi, Elizabeth Alexander,
Steven R. Shapiro, Steven Banks, and John Boston; for the Jerome N.
Frank Legal Services Organization of the Yale Law School by Giovanna
Shay; for Law Professors by Kermit Roosevelt III, Erwin Chemerinsky,
David L. Franklin, Amanda Frost, Seth Kreimer, Daniel Manville, John
Oakley, Malla Pollack, and David Rudovsky, all pro se.

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84 WOODFORD v. NGO
Opinion of the Court
appeal. We hold that proper exhaustion of administrative
remedies is necessary.
I
A
Congress enacted the Prison Litigation Reform Act of
1995 (PLRA), 110 Stat. 1321–71, as amended, 42 U. S. C.
§ 1997e et seq., in 1996 in the wake of a sharp rise in prisoner
litigation in the federal courts, see, e. g., Alexander v. Hawk,
159 F. 3d 1321, 1324–1325 (CA11 1998) (citing statistics).
The PLRA contains a variety of provisions designed to bring
this litigation under control. See, e. g., § 1997e(c) (requiring
district courts to weed out prisoner claims that clearly lack
merit); § 1997e(e) (prohibiting claims for emotional injury
without prior showing of physical injury); § 1997e(d) (re
stricting attorney’s fees).
A centerpiece of the PLRA’s effort “to reduce the quan
tity . . . of prisoner suits” is an “invigorated” exhaustion
provision, § 1997e(a). Porter v. Nussle, 534 U. S. 516, 524
(2002). Before 1980, prisoners asserting constitutional
claims had no obligation to exhaust administrative remedies.
See Wilwording v. Swenson, 404 U. S. 249, 251 (1971) (per
curiam). In the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons
Act, § 7, 94 Stat. 352–353, Congress enacted a weak exhaus
tion provision, which authorized district courts to stay ac
tions under Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983, for a limited
time while a prisoner exhausted “such plain, speedy, and
effective administrative remedies as are available. ”
§ 1997e(a)(1) (1994 ed.). “Exhaustion under the 1980 pre
scription was in large part discretionary; it could be ordered
only if the State’s prison grievance system met specified fed
eral standards, and even then, only if, in the particular case,
the court believed the requirement ‘appropriate and in the
interests of justice.’ ” Nussle, supra, at 523 (quoting
§ 1997e). In addition, this provision did not require exhaus
tion if the prisoner sought only money damages and such

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relief was not available under the relevant administrative
scheme. See McCarthy v. Madigan, 503 U. S. 140, 150–151
(1992).
The PLRA strengthened this exhaustion provision in sev
eral ways. Exhaustion is no longer left to the discretion of
the district court, but is mandatory. See Booth v. Churner,
532 U. S. 731, 739 (2001). Prisoners must now exhaust all
“available” remedies, not just those that meet federal stand
ards. Indeed, as we held in Booth, a prisoner must now
exhaust administrative remedies even where the relief
sought—monetary damages—cannot be granted by the ad
ministrative process. Id., at 734. Finally, exhaustion of
available administrative remedies is required for any suit
challenging prison conditions, not just for suits under § 1983.
Nussle, supra, at 524.
B
California has a grievance system for prisoners who seek
to challenge their conditions of confinement. To initiate the
process, an inmate must fill out a simple form, Dept. of Cor
rections, Inmate/Parolee Appeal Form, CDC 602 (12/87)
(hereinafter Form 602), that is made “readily available to all
inmates.” Cal. Code Regs., tit. 15, § 3084.1(c) (2004). The
inmate must fill out two parts of the form: part A, which is
labeled “Describe Problem,” and part B, which is labeled “Ac
tion Requested.” Then, as explained on Form 602 itself, the
prisoner “must first informally seek relief through discussion
with the appropriate staff member.” App. 40–41. The
staff member fills in part C of Form 602 under the heading
“Staff Response” and then returns the form to the inmate.
If the prisoner is dissatisfied with the result of the infor
mal review, or if informal review is waived by the State,
the inmate may pursue a three-step review process. See
§§ 3084.5(b)–(d). Although California labels this “formal”
review (apparently to distinguish this process from the prior
step), the three-step process is relatively simple. At the
first level, the prisoner must fill in part D of Form 602, which

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states: “If you are dissatisfied, explain below.” Id., at 40.
The inmate then must submit the form, together with a
few other documents, to the appeals coordinator within
15 working days—three weeks—of the action taken.
§ 3084.6(c). This level may be bypassed by the appeals coor
dinator in certain circumstances. § 3084.5(b). Within 15
working days after an inmate submits an appeal, the re
viewer must inform the inmate of the outcome by completing
part E of Form 602 and returning the form to the inmate.
If the prisoner receives an adverse determination at this
first level, or if this level is bypassed, the inmate may pro
ceed to the second level of review conducted by the warden.
§§ 3084.5(c), (e)(1). The inmate does this by filling in part F
of Form 602 and submitting the form within 15 working days
of the prior decision. Within 10 working days thereafter,
the reviewer provides a decision on a letter that is attached
to the form. If the prisoner’s claim is again denied or the
prisoner otherwise is dissatisfied with the result, the pris
oner must explain the basis for his or her dissatisfaction on
part H of the form and mail the form to the Director of the
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
within 15 working days. § 3084.5(e)(2). An inmate’s appeal
may be rejected where “[t]ime limits for submitting the ap
peal are exceeded and the appellant had the opportunity to
file within the prescribed time constraints.” § 3084.3(c)(6).
C
Respondent is a prisoner who was convicted for murder
and is serving a life sentence in the California prison system.
In October 2000, respondent was placed in administrative
segregation for allegedly engaging in “inappropriate activ
ity” in the prison chapel. Two months later, respondent
was returned to the general population, but respondent
claims that he was prohibited from participating in “spe
cial programs,” including a variety of religious activities.

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Approximately six months after that restriction was im
posed, respondent filed a grievance with prison officials chal
lenging that action. That grievance was rejected as un
timely because it was not filed within 15 working days of the
action being challenged. See §§ 3084.3(c)(6), 3084.6(c).
Respondent appealed that decision internally without suc
cess, and subsequently sued petitioners—California correc
tional officials—under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 in Federal District
Court. The District Court granted petitioners’ motion to
dismiss because respondent had not fully exhausted his ad
ministrative remedies as required by § 1997e(a). See App.
to Pet. for Cert. 24–25.
The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed and
held that respondent had exhausted administrative remedies
simply because no such remedies remained available to him.
403 F. 3d 620, 629–630 (2005). The Ninth Circuit’s decision,
while consistent with the decision of a divided panel of the
Sixth Circuit in Thomas v. Woolum, 337 F. 3d 720 (2003),
conflicts with decisions of four other Courts of Appeals. See
Pozo v. McCaughtry, 286 F. 3d 1022, 1025 (CA7) (“To exhaust
remedies, a prisoner must file complaints and appeals in the
place, and at the time, the prison’s administrative rules re
quire”), cert. denied, 537 U. S. 949 (2002); Ross v. County of
Bernalillo, 365 F. 3d 1181, 1185–1186 (CA10 2004) (same);
Spruill v. Gillis, 372 F. 3d 218, 230 (CA3 2004) (same); John
son v. Meadows, 418 F. 3d 1152, 1159 (CA11 2005) (same).
We granted certiorari to address this conflict, 546 U. S. 1015
(2005), and we now reverse.
II
A
The PLRA provides as follows:
“No action shall be brought with respect to prison
conditions under section 1983 of this title, or any other

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Federal law, by a prisoner confined in any jail, prison,
or other correctional facility until such administrative
remedies as are available are exhausted.” § 1997e(a)
(2000 ed.) (emphasis added).
There is no dispute that this language requires a prisoner
to “exhaust” administrative remedies, but the parties differ
sharply in their understanding of the meaning of this re
quirement. Petitioners argue that this provision requires
proper exhaustion. This means, according to petitioners,
that a prisoner must complete the administrative review
process in accordance with the applicable procedural rules,
including deadlines, as a precondition to bringing suit in fed
eral court. Respondent, on the other hand, argues that this
provision demands what he terms “exhaustion simpliciter.”
Brief for Respondent 7. In his view, § 1997e(a) simply
means that a prisoner may not bring suit in federal court
until administrative remedies are no longer available.
Under this interpretation, the reason why administrative
remedies are no longer available is irrelevant. Bare unavail
ability suffices even if this results from a prisoner’s deliber
ate strategy of refraining from filing a timely grievance so
that the litigation of the prisoner’s claim can begin in fed
eral court.
The key for determining which of these interpretations
of § 1997e(a) is correct lies in the term of art “exhausted.”
Exhaustion is an important doctrine in both administrative
and habeas law, and we therefore look to those bodies of law
for guidance.
B
“The doctrine of exhaustion of administrative remedies is
well established in the jurisprudence of administrative law.”
McKart v. United States, 395 U. S. 185, 193 (1969). “The
doctrine provides ‘that no one is entitled to judicial relief

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for a supposed or threatened injury until the prescribed ad
ministrative remedy has been exhausted.’ ” Ibid. (quoting
Myers v. Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp., 303 U. S. 41, 50–51
(1938)). Exhaustion of administrative remedies serves two
main purposes. See McCarthy, 503 U. S., at 145.
First, exhaustion protects “administrative agency author
ity.” Ibid. Exhaustion gives an agency “an opportunity to
correct its own mistakes with respect to the programs it ad
ministers before it is haled into federal court,” and it discour
ages “disregard of [the agency’s] procedures.” Ibid.
Second, exhaustion promotes efficiency. Ibid. Claims
generally can be resolved much more quickly and economi
cally in proceedings before an agency than in litigation in
federal court. In some cases, claims are settled at the ad
ministrative level, and in others, the proceedings before the
agency convince the losing party not to pursue the matter
in federal court. See ibid.; Parisi v. Davidson, 405 U. S.
34, 37 (1972); McKart, supra, at 195. “And even where a
controversy survives administrative review, exhaustion of
the administrative procedure may produce a useful record
for subsequent judicial consideration.” McCarthy, supra,
at 145.
Because of the advantages of administrative review, some
aggrieved parties will voluntarily exhaust all avenues of ad
ministrative review before resorting to federal court, and for
these parties an exhaustion requirement is obviously un
necessary. Statutes requiring exhaustion serve a purpose
when a significant number of aggrieved parties, if given the
choice, would not voluntarily exhaust. Aggrieved parties
may prefer not to exhaust administrative remedies for a
variety of reasons. Although exhaustion promotes overall
efficiency, a party may conclude—correctly or incorrectly—
that exhaustion is not efficient in that party’s particular case.
In addition, some aggrieved parties may prefer to proceed

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directly to federal court for other reasons, including bad
faith.1 See Thomas, 337 F. 3d, at 752–753 (Rosen, J., dissent
ing in part and concurring in judgment).
Because exhaustion requirements are designed to deal
with parties who do not want to exhaust, administrative law
creates an incentive for these parties to do what they would
otherwise prefer not to do, namely, to give the agency a fair
and full opportunity to adjudicate their claims. Administra
tive law does this by requiring proper exhaustion of adminis
trative remedies, which “means using all steps that the
agency holds out, and doing so properly (so that the agency
addresses the issues on the merits).” Pozo, 286 F. 3d, at
1024 (emphasis in original). This Court has described the
doctrine as follows: “[A]s a general rule . . . courts should not
topple over administrative decisions unless the administra
tive body not only has erred, but has erred against objection
made at the time appropriate under its practice.” United
States v. L. A. Tucker Truck Lines, Inc., 344 U. S. 33, 37
(1952) (emphasis added). See also Sims v. Apfel, 530 U. S.
103, 108 (2000); id., at 112 (O’Connor, J., concurring in part
and concurring in judgment) (“On this underlying principle
of administrative law, the Court is unanimous”); id., at 114–
115 (Breyer, J., dissenting); Unemployment Compensation
Comm’n of Alaska v. Aragon, 329 U. S. 143, 155 (1946); Hor
mel v. Helvering, 312 U. S. 552, 556–557 (1941); 2 K. Davis &
R. Pierce, Administrative Law Treatise § 15:8, pp. 341–344
(3d ed. 1994). Proper exhaustion demands compliance with
an agency’s deadlines and other critical procedural rules
because no adjudicative system can function effectively with
1 One can conceive of an inmate’s seeking to avoid creating an adminis
trative record with someone that he or she views as a hostile factfinder,
filing a lawsuit primarily as a method of making some corrections official’s
life difficult, or perhaps even speculating that a suit will mean a welcome—
if temporary—respite from his or her cell.

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out imposing some orderly structure on the course of its
proceedings.2
2 The dissent makes two chief arguments regarding the doctrine of ex
haustion in administrative law. Neither is sound.
First, the dissent contends that, “in the absence of explicit statutory
directive,” proper exhaustion is required only in proceedings that are in
the nature of “appellate review proceedings.” Post, at 112 (opinion of
Stevens, J.). The only authorities cited in support of this proposition
are Sims v. Apfel, 530 U. S. 103, 108–109 (2000)—which concerns different
questions, i. e., issue exhaustion and the distinction between adversarial
and nonadversarial proceedings—and an amici brief, which in turns cites
no supporting authority. See post, at 112 (citing Brief for Law Profes
sors 1). The amici brief argues that “[t]he conceptual key to this case is
[the] distinction” between an “original proceeding,” in which “the court
is simply determining the legality of out-of-court action,” and a “review
proceeding,” in which the court must “review the decision of some other
adjudicator.” Id., at 2–3. According to the amici brief, habeas petitions
are prime examples of “review proceeding[s]” because they “ask federal
courts to review the decisions of state courts.” Id., at 3. This argument
is deeply flawed.
“[H]abeas corpus [is] an original . . . civil remedy for the enforcement
of the right to personal liberty, rather than . . . a stage of the state criminal
proceedings . . . or as an appeal therefrom.” Fay v. Noia, 372 U. S. 391,
423–424 (1963) (footnote omitted). And habeas law includes the “judge
made doctrine of procedural default.” Post, at 108, n. 5. This shows that
the dissent and the amici brief are incorrect in contending that a proper
exhaustion requirement is incompatible with an original proceeding.
Second, the dissent argues that, even if administrative law generally
requires proper exhaustion, respondent falls within an exception to that
rule. Post, at 114. As the dissent puts it, “[b]ecause respondent has
raised constitutional claims, . . . the Court may not, as a matter of federal
common law, apply an extrastatutory waiver requirement against him.”
Ibid. But we are not applying an “extrastatutory” requirement “as a
matter of federal common law.” Ibid. We are interpreting and applying
the statutory requirement set out in the PLRA exhaustion provision. We
interpret the PLRA exhaustion provision to require proper exhaustion,
not the unprecedented scheme of exhaustion simpliciter that respondent
advocates. As for the suggestion that the PLRA might be meant to re
quire proper exhaustion of nonconstitutional claims but not constitutional
claims, we fail to see how such a carve-out would serve Congress’ purpose
of addressing a flood of prisoner litigation in the federal courts, see supra,

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C
The law of habeas corpus has rules that are substantively
similar to those described above. The habeas statute gener
ally requires a state prisoner to exhaust state remedies be
fore filing a habeas petition in federal court. See 28 U. S. C.
§§ 2254(b)(1), (c). “This rule of comity reduces friction be
tween the state and federal court systems by avoiding the
‘unseem[liness]’ of a federal district court’s overturning a
state-court conviction without the state courts having had
an opportunity to correct the constitutional violation in the
first instance.” O’Sullivan v. Boerckel, 526 U. S. 838, 845
(1999) (alteration in original). A state prisoner is generally
barred from obtaining federal habeas relief unless the pris
oner has properly presented his or her claims through one
“complete round of the State’s established appellate review
process.” Ibid. In practical terms, the law of habeas, like
administrative law, requires proper exhaustion, and we have
described this feature of habeas law as follows: “To . . . ‘pro
tect the integrity’ of the federal exhaustion rule, we ask
not only whether a prisoner has exhausted his state reme
dies, but also whether he has properly exhausted those
remedies . . . .” Id., at 848 (citation omitted; emphasis in
original).
The law of habeas, however, uses terminology that differs
from that of administrative law. In habeas, the sanction for
failing to exhaust properly (preclusion of review in federal
court) is given the separate name of procedural default, al
though the habeas doctrines of exhaustion and procedural
default “are similar in purpose and design and implicate sim
ilar concerns,” Keeney v. Tamayo-Reyes, 504 U. S. 1, 7 (1992).
See also Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U. S. 722, 731–732 (1991).
In habeas, state-court remedies are described as having been
“exhausted” when they are no longer available, regardless of
at 84, when the overwhelming majority of prisoner civil rights and prison
condition suits are based on the Constitution.

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the reason for their unavailability. See Gray v. Netherland,
518 U. S. 152, 161 (1996). Thus, if state-court remedies are
no longer available because the prisoner failed to comply
with the deadline for seeking state-court review or for tak
ing an appeal, those remedies are technically exhausted,
ibid., but exhaustion in this sense does not automatically en
title the habeas petitioner to litigate his or her claims in fed
eral court. Instead, if the petitioner procedurally defaulted
those claims, the prisoner generally is barred from asserting
those claims in a federal habeas proceeding. Id., at 162;
Coleman, supra, at 744–751.
III
With this background in mind, we are persuaded that the
PLRA exhaustion requirement requires proper exhaustion.
A
The text of 42 U. S. C. § 1997e(a) strongly suggests that
the PLRA uses the term “exhausted” to mean what the term
means in administrative law, where exhaustion means proper
exhaustion. Section 1997e(a) refers to “such administrative
remedies as are available,” and thus points to the doctrine
of exhaustion in administrative law.
B
Construing § 1997e(a) to require proper exhaustion also
fits with the general scheme of the PLRA, whereas respond
ent’s interpretation would turn that provision into a largely
useless appendage. The PLRA attempts to eliminate un
warranted federal-court interference with the administration
of prisons,3 and thus seeks to “affor[d] corrections officials
time and opportunity to address complaints internally before
allowing the initiation of a federal case.” Nussle, 534 U. S.,
at 525. See also Booth, 532 U. S., at 739. The PLRA also
3 See, e. g., 18 U. S. C. § 3626(b)(2) (termination of prison conditions con
sent decrees).

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was intended to “reduce the quantity and improve the qual
ity of prisoner suits.” Nussle, supra, at 524.
Requiring proper exhaustion serves all of these goals. It
gives prisoners an effective incentive to make full use of the
prison grievance process and accordingly provides prisons
with a fair opportunity to correct their own errors. This is
particularly important in relation to state corrections sys
tems because it is “difficult to imagine an activity in which
a State has a stronger interest, or one that is more intri
cately bound up with state laws, regulations, and procedures,
than the administration of its prisons.” Preiser v. Rodri
guez, 411 U. S. 475, 491–492 (1973).
Proper exhaustion reduces the quantity of prisoner suits
because some prisoners are successful in the administrative
process, and others are persuaded by the proceedings not to
file an action in federal court.4 Finally, proper exhaustion
4 The dissent’s objection, post, at 115–116, that exhaustion simpliciter is
enough to reduce frivolous prisoner suits is not well taken. First, what
matters is not whether proper exhaustion was necessary to reach that
goal, but whether proper exhaustion was mandated by Congress. Second,
the empirical support for the dissent’s conclusion is weak. The dissent
points to a drop in volume of prisoner litigation between 1995 and 2000
and concludes that exhaustion simpliciter “was sufficient to reduce the
quantity of prisoner suits without any procedural default requirement.”
Post, at 116. But this mistakes correlation for causation: A requirement
of exhaustion simpliciter will not, absent a mollified prisoner, prevent a
case from being docketed—and thus appearing in the filing statistics the
dissent cites. The credit for reduced filings more likely belongs to the
PLRA’s enactment of 28 U. S. C. § 1915A (requiring district courts to
screen “before docketing, if feasible,” prisoner civil complaints), and its
amendments to § 1915 (forbidding frequent-filer prisoners from proceeding
in forma pauperis). Finally, prisoner civil rights and prison conditions
cases still account for an outsized share of filings: From 2000 through 2005,
such cases represented between 8.3% and 9.8% of the new filings in
the federal district courts, or on average about one new prisoner case
every other week for each of the nearly 1,000 active and senior district
judges across the country. See Administrative Office of the United States
Courts, Judicial Facts and Figures, tbls. 1.1, 4.4, 4.6, http://www.uscourts.
gov/judicialfactsfigures/contents.html (as visited June 19, 2006, and avail
able in Clerk of Court’s case file).

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improves the quality of those prisoner suits that are eventu
ally filed because proper exhaustion often results in the cre
ation of an administrative record that is helpful to the court.
When a grievance is filed shortly after the event giving rise
to the grievance, witnesses can be identified and questioned
while memories are still fresh, and evidence can be gathered
and preserved.
While requiring proper exhaustion serves the purposes of
the PLRA, respondent’s interpretation of § 1997e(a) would
make the PLRA exhaustion scheme wholly ineffective. The
benefits of exhaustion can be realized only if the prison
grievance system is given a fair opportunity to consider the
grievance. The prison grievance system will not have such
an opportunity unless the grievant complies with the sys
tem’s critical procedural rules. A prisoner who does not
want to participate in the prison grievance system will have
little incentive to comply with the system’s procedural rules
unless noncompliance carries a sanction, and under respond
ent’s interpretation of the PLRA noncompliance carries no
significant sanction. For example, a prisoner wishing to by
pass available administrative remedies could simply file a
late grievance without providing any reason for failing to file
on time. If the prison then rejects the grievance as un
timely, the prisoner could proceed directly to federal court.
And acceptance of the late grievance would not thwart the
prisoner’s wish to bypass the administrative process; the
prisoner could easily achieve this by violating other proce
dural rules until the prison administration has no alternative
but to dismiss the grievance on procedural grounds. We are
confident that the PLRA did not create such a toothless
scheme.
Respondent argues that his interpretation of the PLRA’s
exhaustion provision would filter out frivolous claims be
cause, by the time the deadline for filing a grievance has
passed, the inmate may no longer wish to file suit. Brief for
Respondent 43. But since the deadline for filing an adminis
trative grievance is generally not very long—14 to 30 days

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according to the United States, see Brief for United States
as Amicus Curiae 29, and even less according to respondent,
see Brief for Respondent 30, n. 17—it is doubtful that Con
gress thought requiring a prisoner to wait this long would
provide much of a deterrent. Indeed, many prisoners would
probably find it difficult to prepare, file, and serve a civil
complaint before the expiration of the deadline for filing a
grievance in many correctional systems.
Respondent also contends that his interpretation of the
PLRA exhaustion requirement would filter out frivolous
claims because prisoners could not simply wait until the
deadline for filing an administrative grievance had passed.
According to respondent, “most grievance systems give ad
ministrators the discretion to hear untimely grievances,” and
therefore a prisoner “will be required to file an untimely
grievance, and thereby give the grievance system” the op
portunity to address the complaint. Id., at 43. But assum
ing for the sake of argument that the premise of this argu
ment is correct, i. e., that a court could never conclude that
administrative remedies were unavailable unless an adminis
trative decision had so held, but see Coleman, 501 U. S., at
735, n., a prisoner who does not want to participate in the
prison grievance process would have little difficulty in forc
ing the prison to dismiss his administrative case on proce
dural grounds. Under the California system, for example,
a prisoner has numerous opportunities to miss deadlines.
Therefore, the task of engineering such a dismissal of a
grievance on procedural grounds is unlikely to be sufficient
to alter the conduct of a prisoner whose objective is to by
pass the administrative process.
C
Finally, as interpreted by respondent, the PLRA exhaus
tion requirement would be unprecedented. Respondent has
not pointed to any statute or case that purports to require

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exhaustion while at the same time allowing a party to by
pass deliberately the administrative process by flouting
the agency’s procedural rules. It is most unlikely that the
PLRA, which was intended to deal with what was perceived
as a disruptive tide of frivolous prisoner litigation, adopted
an exhaustion requirement that goes further than any other
model that has been called to our attention in permitting the
wholesale bypassing of administrative remedies. Respond
ent identifies three models for the scheme of “exhaustion
simpliciter” that he believes is set out in the PLRA, but
none of these examples is apt.
Respondent first looks to habeas law as it existed prior to
Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U. S. 72 (1977). Before then, a
federal habeas claim could be procedurally defaulted only if
the prisoner deliberately bypassed state remedies. See Fay
v. Noia, 372 U. S. 391, 438 (1963). It would be fanciful, how
ever, to suggest that the PLRA exhaustion requirement was
patterned on habeas law as it existed in the years between
Fay and Wainwright. As respondent stresses, the PLRA
was enacted contemporaneously with the Antiterrorism and
Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 110 Stat.
1214, which gave federal habeas review a structure markedly
different from that which existed in the period between Fay
and Wainwright.
Furthermore, respondent’s interpretation of § 1997e(a)
would not duplicate the scheme that existed in habeas during
that interval. As interpreted by respondent, § 1997e(a)
would permit a prisoner to bypass deliberately and flagrantly
administrative review without any risk of sanction. Be
cause it is unlikely that the PLRA was intended to permit
this, the two Courts of Appeals that have held that § 1997e(a)
does not require proper exhaustion both pointedly stated
that their decisions did not allow a prisoner to bypass delib
erately administrative remedies. See 403 F. 3d, at 629;
Thomas, 337 F. 3d, at 732, and n. 4. Neither of these courts,

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however, explained how § 1997e(a) can be interpreted in this
way—that is, so that it does not require proper exhaustion
but somehow proscribes deliberate bypass.
Apparently recognizing that such an interpretation nei
ther has a statutory basis nor refers to a concept of exhaus
tion from an existing body of law, respondent does not con
tend that § 1997e(a) prohibits deliberate bypass; in his view,
all that § 1997e(a) demands is that a prisoner wait until any
opportunity for administrative review has evaporated. But
in making this argument, respondent asks us to hold that the
PLRA was meant to adopt an exhaustion scheme that stands
in sharp contrast to both current and past habeas law and is
unlike any other exhaustion scheme that has been called to
our attention.
Respondent next suggests that the PLRA exhaustion re
quirement was patterned on § 14(b) of the Age Discrimina
tion in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA), 81 Stat. 607, codi
fied at 29 U. S. C. § 633(b), and § 706(e) of Title VII of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 260, as redesignated and
amended, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e–5(e), but these are implausible
models. Neither of these provisions makes reference to the
concept of exhaustion, and neither is in any sense an exhaus
tion provision.
In Oscar Mayer & Co. v. Evans, 441 U. S. 750 (1979), we
considered § 14(b) of the ADEA, which provides that, if
a State has an agency to redress state-law age-related
employment-discrimination claims, an ADEA claim may not
be brought in federal court “before the expiration of sixty
days after proceedings have been commenced under the
State law.” 29 U. S. C. § 633(b) (emphasis added). This pro
vision makes no reference to the exhaustion of state reme
dies, only to the “commence[ment]” of state proceedings, and
this provision leaves no doubt that proper commencement of
those proceedings is not required. As we noted, see Oscar
Mayer, 441 U. S., at 759, § 14(b) of the ADEA states that the
requirement of commencement is satisfied merely by sending

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the state agency a signed statement of the pertinent facts,
and § 14(b) explicitly provides that the commencement re
quirement does not entail compliance with any other state
procedural rule, including a deadline for initiating the state
proceeding, id., at 760. We see little similarity between
§ 14(b), which merely requires the commencement of state
proceedings and explicitly does not require timely com
mencement, and 42 U. S. C. § 1997e(a), which expressly re
quires exhaustion of available administrative remedies with
no reference to a federally based limiting principle.
Section 706(e) of Title VII is also fundamentally different
from the PLRA exhaustion provision. As interpreted by
this Court, § 706(e) means that a complainant who “initially
institutes proceedings with a state or local agency with au
thority to grant or seek relief from the practice charged”
must “file a charge” with that agency, or “have the EEOC
refer the charge to that agency, within 240 days of the al
leged discriminatory event . . . .” EEOC v. Commercial
Office Products Co., 486 U. S. 107, 110–111 (1988). Follow
ing the reasoning of Oscar Mayer, we held that this filing
requirement did not demand that the charge submitted to
the state or local authority be filed in compliance with the
authority’s time limit. 486 U. S., at 123–125. Because
§ 706(e) of Title VII refers only to the filing of a charge with
a state or local agency and not to the exhaustion of remedies,
§ 706(e) cannot be viewed as a model for the PLRA exhaus
tion provision.
IV
Respondent’s remaining arguments regarding the inter
pretation of 42 U. S. C. § 1997e(a) are unconvincing. Relying
on the use of the term “until” in the phrase “until such ad
ministrative remedies as are available are exhausted,” re
spondent contends that “[t]he use of the temporal word ‘until’
. . . conveys a timing requirement: it assumes that the ques
tion to be answered is simply whether the prisoner can file
suit now or must wait until later.” Brief for Respondent 11.

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Likewise, according to respondent, the use of the present
tense (“such administrative remedies as are available,”
§ 1997e(a) (emphasis added)) requires “a focus on whether
any administrative remedies are presently available.” Id.,
at 12. But saying that a party may not sue in federal court
until the party first pursues all available avenues of adminis
trative review necessarily means that, if the party never
pursues all available avenues of administrative review, the
person will never be able to sue in federal court. Thus,
§ 1997e(a)’s use of the term “until” and the present tense does
not support respondent’s position.
Respondent attaches significance to the fact that the
PLRA exhaustion provision does not expressly state that a
prisoner must have “properly exhausted” available adminis
trative remedies, whereas a tolling provision of the AEDPA
provides that the time for filing a federal habeas petition is
tolled during the period when “a properly filed application
for State post-conviction or other collateral review . . . is
pending.” 28 U. S. C. § 2244(d)(2) (emphasis added). In our
view, respondent draws an unreasonable inference from the
difference in the wording of these two provisions. Although
the AEDPA and the PLRA were enacted at roughly the
same time, they are separate and detailed pieces of legisla
tion. Moreover, the AEDPA and PLRA provisions deal
with separate issues: tolling in the case of the AEDPA and
exhaustion in the case of the PLRA.
Respondent maintains that his interpretation of the PLRA
exhaustion provision is bolstered by another PLRA provi
sion, 42 U. S. C. § 1997e(c)(2), that permits a district court to
dismiss certain prisoner claims “without first requiring the
exhaustion of administrative remedies.” According to re
spondent, this provision shows that Congress thought that,
at the point when a district court might make such a ruling
(which would typically be well after the filing of the com
plaint), a prisoner might still have the opportunity to exhaust
administrative remedies. Because short administrative fil

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ing deadlines would make this impossible, respondent con
tends, Congress cannot have thought that a prisoner’s failure
to comply with those deadlines would preclude litigation in
federal court.
Respondent’s argument is unconvincing for at least two
reasons. First, respondent has not shown that Congress
had reason to believe that every prison system would have
relatively short and categorical filing deadlines. Indeed, re
spondent asserts that most grievance systems give adminis
trators the discretion to hear untimely grievances. Second,
even if dismissals under § 1997e(c)(2) typically occur when
the opportunity to pursue administrative remedies has
passed, § 1997e(c)(2) still serves a useful function by making
it clear that the PLRA exhaustion requirement is not juris
dictional, and thus allowing a district court to dismiss plainly
meritless claims without first addressing what may be a
much more complex question, namely, whether the pris
oner did in fact properly exhaust available administrative
remedies.5
Respondent next argues that the similarity between the
wording of the PLRA exhaustion provision and the AEDPA
exhaustion provision, 28 U. S. C. § 2254(c), shows that the
PLRA provision was meant to incorporate the narrow tech
nical definition of exhaustion that applies in habeas. We re
ject this argument for two reasons.
First, there is nothing particularly distinctive about the
wording of the habeas and PLRA exhaustion provisions.
They say what any exhaustion provision must say—that a
judicial remedy may not be sought or obtained unless, until,
5 Questions regarding the timeliness of prisoner filings occur frequently.
See, e. g., Wallace v. Burbury, 305 F. Supp. 2d 801, 806 (ND Ohio 2003);
Pusey v. Belanger, No. Civ.02–351–SLR, 2004 WL 2075472 (D. Del., Sept.
14, 2004); Eakle v. Tennis, No. Civ. 4:CV–04–2040, 2005 WL 2266270 (MD
Pa., Sept. 16, 2005); Williams v. Briley, No. 04 C 5701, 2005 WL 1498865
(ND Ill., June 21, 2005); Isaac v. Nix, No. Civ.A.2:04CV172RWS, 2006 WL
861642 (ND Ga., Mar. 30, 2006).

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or before certain other remedies are exhausted. It is, there
fore, unrealistic to infer from the wording of the PLRA pro
vision that Congress framed and adopted that provision with
habeas law and not administrative law in mind. Indeed, the
wording of the PLRA provision (a prisoner may not bring
an action with respect to prison conditions “until such ad
ministrative remedies as are available are exhausted”) is
strikingly similar to our description of the doctrine of admin
istrative exhaustion (“ ‘no one is entitled to judicial relief for
a supposed or threatened injury until the prescribed admin
istrative remedy has been exhausted,’ ” McKart, 395 U. S., at
193 (emphasis added)).
Second, respondent’s suggestion that the PLRA was
meant to incorporate the same technical distinction that ex
ists in habeas law without providing any sanction to pre
vent willful noncompliance—not even the deliberate bypass
standard of Fay—would produce a scheme that in practical
terms is radically different from the habeas scheme. Copy
ing habeas’ narrow definition of exhaustion without furnish
ing any sanction to promote compliance would be like copy
ing the design for an airplane but omitting one of the wings.
Respondent contends that requiring proper exhaustion
will lead prison administrators to devise procedural require
ments that are designed to trap unwary prisoners and thus
to defeat their claims. Respondent does not contend, how
ever, that anything like this occurred in his case, and it is
speculative that this will occur in the future. Corrections
officials concerned about maintaining order in their institu
tions have a reason for creating and retaining grievance sys
tems that provide—and that are perceived by prisoners as
providing—a meaningful opportunity for prisoners to raise
meritorious grievances. And with respect to the possibility
that prisons might create procedural requirements for the
purpose of tripping up all but the most skillful prisoners,
while Congress repealed the “plain, speedy, and effective”
standard, see 42 U. S. C. § 1997e(a)(1) (1994 ed.) (repealed

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Breyer, J., concurring in judgment
1996), we have no occasion here to decide how such situations
might be addressed.
Respondent argues that requiring proper exhaustion is
harsh for prisoners, who generally are untrained in the law
and are often poorly educated. This argument overlooks
the informality and relative simplicity of prison grievance
systems like California’s, as well as the fact that prisoners
who litigate in federal court generally proceed pro se and are
forced to comply with numerous unforgiving deadlines and
other procedural requirements.
* * *
For these reasons, we reverse the judgment of the Court
of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and remand the case for
proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice Breyer, concurring in the judgment.
I agree with the Court that, in enacting the Prison Litiga
tion Reform Act (PLRA), 42 U. S. C. § 1997e(a), Congress in
tended the term “exhausted” to “mean what the term means
in administrative law, where exhaustion means proper ex
haustion.” Ante, at 93. I do not believe that Congress
desired a system in which prisoners could elect to bypass
prison grievance systems without consequences. Adminis
trative law, however, contains well-established exceptions to
exhaustion. See Sims v. Apfel, 530 U. S. 103, 115 (2000)
(Breyer, J., joined by Rehnquist, C. J., and Scalia and Ken
nedy, JJ., dissenting) (constitutional claims); Shalala v. Illi
nois Council on Long Term Care, Inc., 529 U. S. 1, 13 (2000)
(futility); McKart v. United States, 395 U. S. 185, 197–201
(1969) (hardship); McCarthy v. Madigan, 503 U. S. 140, 147–
148 (1992) (inadequate or unavailable administrative reme
dies); see generally II R. Pierce, Administrative Law Trea
tise § 15 (4th ed. 2002). Moreover, habeas corpus law, which
contains an exhaustion requirement that is “substantively

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Stevens, J., dissenting
similar ” to administrative law’s and which informs the
Court’s opinion, ante, at 92–93, also permits a number of ex
ceptions. See post, at 109, n. 5 (Stevens, J., dissenting)
(noting that habeas corpus law permits “petitioners to over
come procedural defaults if they can show that the proce
dural rule is not firmly established and regularly followed,
if they can demonstrate cause and prejudice to overcome a
procedural default, or if enforcing the procedural default rule
would result in a miscarriage of justice” (citation omitted)).
At least two Circuits that have interpreted the statute in
a manner similar to that which the Court today adopts have
concluded that the PLRA’s proper exhaustion requirement is
not absolute. See Spruill v. Gillis, 372 F. 3d 218, 232 (CA3
2004); Giano v. Goord, 380 F. 3d 670, 677 (CA2 2004). In
my view, on remand, the lower court should similarly con
sider any challenges that respondent may have concerning
whether his case falls into a traditional exception that the
statute implicitly incorporates.
Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Souter and Jus
tice Ginsburg join, dissenting.
The citizen’s right to access an impartial tribunal to seek
redress for official grievances is so fundamental and so well
established that it is sometimes taken for granted. A state
statute that purported to impose a 15-day period of limita
tions on the right of a discrete class of litigants to sue a state
official for violation of a federal right would obviously be
unenforceable in a federal court. The question in this case
is whether, by enacting the exhaustion requirement in the
Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PLRA), Congress in
tended to authorize state correction officials to impose a com
parable limitation on prisoners’ constitutionally protected
right of access to the federal courts. The text of the statute,
particularly when read in the light of our well-settled juris
prudence, provides us with the same unambiguous negative
answer that common sense would dictate.

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I
Congress enacted the following exhaustion requirement in
the PLRA:
“No action shall be brought with respect to prison
conditions under section 1983 of this title, or any other
Federal law, by a prisoner confined in any jail, prison,
or other correctional facility until such administrative
remedies as are available are exhausted.” 42 U. S. C.
§ 1997e(a).
This provision requires prisoners to exhaust informal rem
edies before filing a lawsuit under federal law. They must
file an administrative grievance and, if the resolution of that
grievance is unsatisfactory to them, they must exhaust avail
able administrative appeals. The statute, however, says
nothing about the reasons why a grievance may have been
denied; it does not distinguish between a denial on the merits
and a denial based on a procedural error. It does not attach
any significance to a prison official’s decision that a prisoner
has made procedural missteps in exhausting administrative
remedies. In the words of federal courts jurisprudence, the
text of the PLRA does not impose a sanction of waiver or
procedural default upon those prisoners who make such pro
cedural errors. See Engle v. Isaac, 456 U. S. 107, 125–
126, n. 28 (1982) (explaining that “the problem of waiver is
separate from the question whether a state prisoner has
exhausted state remedies”).1 The plain text of the PLRA
simply requires that “such administrative remedies as are
available” be exhausted before the prisoner can take the se
1 Because we have used the term “waiver” in referring to this sanction
in the habeas corpus context, I use that term in this opinion. Strictly
speaking, it would be more accurate to characterize this sanction as a
“forfeiture” sanction, as there is no question that prisoners do not, by
making a procedural error in the course of exhausting administrative rem
edies, purposefully relinquish their right to bring constitutional claims in
federal court.

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rious step of filing a federal lawsuit against the officials who
hold him in custody.
Today, however, the Court concludes that the “PLRA ex
haustion requirement requires proper exhaustion,” ante,
at 93. The absence of textual support for that conclusion
is a sufficient reason for rejecting it. Unlike 28 U. S. C.
§ 2244(d)(2), a tolling provision of the Antiterrorism and Ef
fective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which was signed into law
just two days before the PLRA, 42 U. S. C. § 1997e(a) lacks
any textual requirement of proper exhaustion. See Artuz v.
Bennett, 531 U. S. 4, 8 (2000) (explaining the importance of
the textual requirement that an application be “properly
filed” under 28 U. S. C. § 2244(d)(2)). Instead, just as in the
habeas context, under the PLRA a prisoner “who has [proce
durally] defaulted his federal claims in [a state prison griev
ance proceeding] meets the technical requirements for ex
haustion; there are no state remedies any longer ‘available’
to him.” Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U. S. 722, 732 (1991).
Accordingly, under the plain text of 42 U. S. C. § 1997e(a),
respondent satisfied his duty to exhaust available adminis
trative remedies before filing a federal lawsuit.
II
The majority essentially ignores the PLRA’s text,2 sug
gesting instead that general administrative law principles,
which allow courts in certain circumstances to impose proce
2 The majority does not claim that the plain language of the statute
dictates its decision, but rather that the text “strongly suggests” that the
PLRA includes a procedural default sanction, ante, at 93. The majority
then states: “Section 1997e(a) refers to ‘such administrative remedies as
are available,’ and thus points to the doctrine of exhaustion in administra
tive law.” Ibid. The reference to “administrative remedies” simply ad
dresses the fact that the review procedures provided by prison officials
are administrative in character rather than judicial. At any rate, as dis
cussed in Part III, infra, the doctrine of exhaustion in administrative law
does not support the majority’s engraftment of a procedural default sanc
tion into the PLRA.

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dural default sanctions as a matter of federal common law,
suggest we should read waiver into the PLRA. However,
as discussed in Part III, infra, our cases make clear that
such extratextual waiver sanctions are only appropriate if a
statute directs a federal court to act as an appellate tribunal
directly reviewing the decision of a federal agency. Because
actions brought under Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983,
such as respondent’s, are de novo proceedings in federal dis
trict court, the majority’s invocation of these common-law
principles is seriously misguided.
The majority’s disregard of the plain text of the PLRA is
especially unjustified in light of the backdrop against which
the statute was enacted. We presume, of course, that Con
gress is familiar with this Court’s precedents and expects its
legislation to be interpreted in conformity with those prece
dents. See, e. g., Edelman v. Lynchburg College, 535 U. S.
106, 117, n. 13 (2002); Porter v. Nussle, 534 U. S. 516, 528
(2002); North Star Steel Co. v. Thomas, 515 U. S. 29, 34 (1995).
This strong presumption is even more forceful when the un
derlying precedent is “ ‘unusually important.’ ” Gebser v.
Lago Vista Independent School Dist., 524 U. S. 274, 294, n. 1
(1998) (quoting Cannon v. University of Chicago, 441 U. S.
677, 699 (1979)). Consistent with this presumption, if we
have already provided a definitive interpretation of the lan
guage in one statute, and Congress then uses nearly identical
language in another statute, we will give the language in the
latter statute an identical interpretation unless there is a
clear indication in the text or legislative history that we
should not do so. See, e. g., United States v. Wells, 519 U. S.
482, 495 (1997). Under these elementary principles of stat
utory interpretation, the PLRA’s exhaustion requirement
does not incorporate a procedural default component.
As the Solicitor General correctly points out in his brief
supporting petitioners, “the PLRA’s exhaustion provision is
essentially identical to that of the habeas corpus statute.”
Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 13. Specifically,

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a provision in the federal habeas statute, first enacted in 1948
as a codification of a previous judge-made rule,3 bars relief
“unless it appears that . . . the applicant has exhausted the
remedies available in the courts of the State,” 28 U. S. C.
§ 2254(b)(1)(A).4 The PLRA similarly bars judicial relief
“until such administrative remedies as are available are ex
hausted,” 42 U. S. C. § 1997e(a). The only noteworthy dis
tinction between the two provisions is that 28 U. S. C.
§ 2254(b)(1)(A) uses the word “unless,” whereas 42 U. S. C.
§ 1997e(a) uses the word “until.” If anything, this distinc
tion suggests that the exhaustion requirement in the PLRA
is less amenable to a waiver sanction than the comparable
requirement in the habeas statute: The word “until” indi
cates a temporal condition whereas the word “unless” would
have been more appropriate for a procedural bar.
Notwithstanding the use of the word “unless” in 28 U. S. C.
§ 2254(b)(1)(A), as the majority correctly recognizes, we have
held that state-court remedies are “exhausted” for the pur
poses of the federal habeas statute so long as “they are no
longer available, regardless of the reason for their unavail
ability,” ante, at 92–93. In other words, the exhaustion re
quirement in the federal habeas statute does not incorporate
a procedural default sanction.5
3 See generally O’Sullivan v. Boerckel, 526 U. S. 838, 850–853 (1999)
(Stevens, J., joined by Ginsburg and Breyer, JJ., dissenting) (tracing
history of exhaustion requirement in habeas law).
4 This language is, in relevant part, identical to the language as it was
enacted in 1948. See 62 Stat. 967.
5 In habeas law it is a separate judge-made doctrine of procedural de
fault, stemming from our decision in Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U. S. 72
(1977), that may bar relief even though a claim has been exhausted. This
procedural default doctrine is based on unique considerations of comity in
the habeas context, including the need to ensure that the state criminal
trial remains the “main event” rather than a “tryout on the road” for
a later federal habeas proceeding. Id., at 90 (internal quotation marks
omitted). Moreover, procedural default in habeas is closely related to the
principle that this Court lacks certiorari jurisdiction to review a state
court judgment that rests on an adequate and independent state proce

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Between Congress’ codification of the exhaustion require
ment in federal habeas law and Congress’ adoption of an es
sentially identical exhaustion requirement in the PLRA, we
decided no fewer than six cases in which we stated explicitly
that a habeas petitioner satisfies the statutory exhaustion
requirement so long as state-court remedies are no longer
available to him at the time of the federal-court filing, re
gardless of the reason for their unavailability. See Cole
man, 501 U. S., at 731; Castille v. Peoples, 489 U. S. 346, 351
(1989); Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288, 298 (1989); Engle, 456
U. S., at 125, n. 8; Humphrey v. Cady, 405 U. S. 504, 516
(1972); Fay v. Noia, 372 U. S. 391, 434–435 (1963).
The Court rejects the obvious analogy to habeas law be
cause the wording of the PLRA’s exhaustion provision is also
“strikingly similar to our description of the doctrine of ad
ministrative exhaustion (‘ “no one is entitled to judicial relief
for a supposed or threatened injury until the prescribed ad
dural ground. See id., at 81–82. It is undisputed that these unique con
siderations do not apply in the context of 42 U. S. C. § 1983 suits, because
the “very purpose of § 1983 was to interpose the federal courts between
the States and the people, as guardians of the people’s federal rights.”
Mitchum v. Foster, 407 U. S. 225, 242 (1972). Accordingly, the majority
correctly does not suggest that we incorporate our procedural default ju
risprudence from the federal habeas context into prison conditions suits
under § 1983.
Nonetheless, I fear that the majority’s analysis may actually create a
harsher procedural default regime under the PLRA than the judge-made
procedural default doctrine in habeas law. But see Muhammad v. Close,
540 U. S. 749, 751 (2004) (per curiam) (stating that “[p]risoners suing
under § 1983 . . . generally face a substantially lower gate [than prisoners
seeking habeas corpus relief], even with the requirement of the Prison
Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that administrative opportunities be ex
hausted first” (citing 42 U. S. C. § 1997e(a))). Our habeas jurisprudence
allows petitioners to overcome procedural defaults if they can show that
the procedural rule is not firmly established and regularly followed, see
James v. Kentucky, 466 U. S. 341, 348 (1984), if they can demonstrate cause
and prejudice to overcome a procedural default, or if enforcing the proce
dural default rule would result in a miscarriage of justice, see Murray v.
Carrier, 477 U. S. 478 (1986).

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110 WOODFORD v. NGO
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ministrative remedy has been exhausted” ’),” ante, at 102
(quoting McKart v. United States, 395 U. S. 185, 193 (1969),
in turn citing Myers v. Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp., 303
U. S. 41, 50–51 (1938)). The language quoted by the major
ity from our case law is indeed similar to the language of the
PLRA (and the habeas corpus statute). But this provides
no help to the majority: We clearly used this language to
describe only an exhaustion requirement, not a procedural
default sanction.
The quoted language originally appeared in Justice
Brandeis’ opinion in Myers, 303 U. S., at 50–51. Myers is a
simple exhaustion case: The question presented was whether
an employer could seek the immediate intervention of federal
courts in response to a complaint filed with the National
Labor Relations Board that it had engaged in unfair labor
practices, or whether it had to await the conclusion of the
Board’s proceedings to avail itself of judicial review. The
case was purely about timing—there was no discussion what
ever of procedural default.
McKart clearly recognized that the language of Myers
concerned only exhaustion, not procedural default. Immedi
ately after quoting Myers, the McKart Court discussed the
benefits of exhaustion (primarily avoiding premature inter
ruption of the agency process), and drew an analogy to judi
cial rules that limit interlocutory appeals, without making
any reference to procedural default. See 395 U. S., at 193–
194. It was not until later in the opinion that the McKart
Court turned to a discussion of the considerations underlying
the imposition of a procedural default sanction in cases
“where the administrative process is at an end and a party
seeks judicial review of a decision that was not appealed
through the administrative process.” Id., at 194.
In sum, the language the majority quotes from McKart
further supports the presumption that Congress intended
the exhaustion requirement in the PLRA to be read in con
formity with our decisions interpreting the exhaustion re

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quirement in the federal habeas statute—that is, to require
exhaustion, but not to impose a waiver sanction for proce
dural errors made in the course of exhaustion.
III
Absent any support for a procedural default sanction in
the text of the PLRA, the Court turns to background princi
ples of administrative law in an effort to justify its holding.
See ante, at 89–91. The Court’s discussion of these back
ground administrative law principles misapprehends our
precedent.
As a general rule in the administrative law context, courts
should not “ ‘topple over administrative decisions unless the
administrative body has not only erred, but has erred
against objection made at the appropriate time under its
practice.’ ” Ante, at 90 (quoting United States v. L. A.
Tucker Truck Lines, Inc., 344 U. S. 33, 37 (1952)). This doc
trine is, “like most judicial doctrines, subject to numerous
exceptions. Application of the doctrine to specific cases re
quires an understanding of its purposes and of the particular
administrative scheme involved.” McKart, 395 U. S., at 193
(footnote omitted); see id., at 198–201 (declining to apply
waiver doctrine in the circumstances of the case before it).
The waiver doctrine in administrative law is “largely [a]
creatur[e] of statute.” Sims v. Apfel, 530 U. S. 103, 107
(2000). In other words, many statutes explicitly prohibit
courts from considering claims “ ‘that ha[ve] not been
urged’ ” before the administrative agency. Id., at 108
(quoting National Labor Relations Act, 29 U. S. C. § 160(e)
(1982 ed.)). See L. A. Tucker Truck Lines, 344 U. S., at 36,
n. 6 (collecting statutes). It is important to emphasize that
statutory waiver requirements always mandate, by their
plain terms, that courts shall not consider arguments not
properly raised before the agency; we have never suggested
that the word “exhaustion,” standing alone, imposes a statu
tory waiver requirement. Accordingly, the Court’s claim

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that a procedural default sanction is mandated by simply “in
terpreting and applying the statutory requirement set out in
the PLRA exhaustion provision,” ante, at 91, n. 2, is pat
ently erroneous.
In the federal administrative law context we have also im
posed waiver requirements even in the absence of explicit
statutory directive. This judge-made rule, discussed exten
sively by the majority, see ante, at 88–91, however, is based
on “an analogy to the rule that appellate courts will not con
sider arguments not raised before trial courts.” Sims, 530
U. S., at 108–109. As amici curiae law professors explain,
this is because, in the context of such appellate review pro
ceedings, procedural errors in the course of exhaustion natu
rally create bars to review because the decision under review
rests on a procedural ground. Brief for Law Professors 1.
Moreover, the rule that appellate tribunals will not consider
claims not properly exhausted below prevents parties from
being unfairly surprised on appeal by resolution of issues
about which they lacked an opportunity or incentive to intro
duce evidence at trial. See Sims, 530 U. S., at 109. Accord
ingly, whether a court should impose a procedural default
sanction for issues not properly exhausted in a prior admin
istrative proceeding “depends on the degree to which the
analogy to normal adversarial litigation applies in a particu
lar administrative proceeding.” Ibid. (citing L. A. Tucker
Truck Lines and Hormel v. Helvering, 312 U. S. 552 (1941)).
If the analogy does not hold, we will not impose a procedural
default sanction. See Sims, 530 U. S., at 108–110.6
6 The majority’s attempt to distinguish Sims as concerning “different
questions,” ante, at 91, n. 2, is perplexing, particularly in light of the fact
that the United States, in its brief supporting petitioners, relies on Sims
to argue that our administrative law decisions support the proposition that
the Court should impose a waiver sanction into the PLRA. See Brief for
United States as Amicus Curiae 11. Although the particular procedural
error made during the exhaustion of administrative remedies was differ
ent in Sims than the procedural error at issue here, our analysis in Sims

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Applying these principles, it is clear that ordinary princi
ples of administrative law do not justify engrafting proce
dural default into the PLRA. The purpose of a 42 U. S. C.
§ 1983 action such as that filed by respondent is not to obtain
direct review of an order entered in the grievance procedure,
but to obtain redress for an alleged violation of federal law
committed by state corrections officials. See, e. g., Mitchum
v. Foster, 407 U. S. 225, 242 (1972). It is undisputed that the
PLRA does nothing to change the nature of the federal ac
tion under § 1983; prisoners who bring such actions after ex
hausting their administrative remedies are entitled to de
novo proceedings in the federal district court without any
deference (on issues of law or fact) to any ruling in the ad
ministrative grievance proceedings. In sum, because fed
eral district court proceedings in prison condition litigation
bear no resemblance to appellate review of lower court deci
sions, the administrative law precedent cited by the majority
makes clear that we should not engraft a judge-made proce
dural default sanction into the PLRA.7 The majority’s mis
apprehension of our precedent is especially troubling be
cause, as the American Bar Association points out, we should
be particularly hesitant to impose “judicially-created proce
dural technicalities . . . ‘in a statutory scheme in which lay
men, unassisted by trained lawyers, initiate the process.’ ”
concerned the circumstances under which we should or should not engraft
a waiver sanction into the administrative exhaustion process generally.
See 530 U. S., at 108–112; id., at 112–113 (O’Connor, J., concurring in part
and concurring in judgment); id., at 114–115 (Breyer, J., dissenting).
7 The majority’s suggestion that habeas law indicates otherwise, see
ante, at 91–92, n. 2, is incorrect. As explained above, see n. 5, supra, the
judge-made procedural default sanction in habeas law is based on unique
considerations that do not apply to § 1983 suits. Our precedent concern
ing judicial review of administrative proceedings, upon which the majority
purports to rely, see ante, at 93, makes clear that we will not impose a
waiver sanction when judicial review of the administrative decision does
not resemble appellate review of lower court decisions.

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Brief as Amicus Curiae 11 (quoting Oscar Mayer & Co. v.
Evans, 441 U. S. 750, 765, n. 13 (1979)).8
Finally, the majority’s invocation of judge-made adminis
trative law principles fails for an entirely separate reason:
An “established exception” to the judge-made doctrine of
procedural default in review of administrative proceedings
permits individuals to raise constitutional complaints for the
first time in federal court, even if they failed to raise those
claims properly before the agency. Sims, 530 U. S., at 115
(Breyer, J., joined by Rehnquist, C. J., and Scalia and Ken
nedy, JJ., dissenting) (citing Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U. S.
319, 329, n. 10 (1976)). Because respondent has raised con
stitutional claims, under our precedent, the Court may not,
as a matter of federal common law, apply an extrastatutory
waiver requirement against him.
IV
The principal arguments offered by the Court in support
of its holding are policy arguments that, in its view, are
grounded in the purposes of the PLRA.9 The majority cor
rectly identifies two of the principal purposes of the PLRA:
(1) affording corrections officials time and opportunity to ad
dress complaints internally before the initiation of a federal
lawsuit; and (2) reducing the quantity, and improving the
quality, of prison litigation. Both of these purposes would
8 The majority notes that many prisoners proceed pro se in federal court,
where there are also time limits and other procedural requirements. See
ante, at 102. However, the timeliness and other procedural requirements
of prison grievance systems are generally far more stringent than those
imposed by federal courts. See Brief for American Civil Liberties Union
et al. as Amici Curiae 6, n. 1, 25–27; Brief for Jerome N. Frank Legal
Services Organization of Yale Law School as Amicus Curiae A1–A7.
9 Of course, if the majority were serious that “what matters is not
whether proper exhaustion was necessary to reach [policy goals], but
whether proper exhaustion was mandated by Congress,” ante, at 94, n. 4,
its opinion would not rest almost entirely on policy arguments.

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be served by the PLRA, even if the Court did not engraft a
procedural default sanction into the statute.
The first policy concern identified by the majority does not
even arguably justify either a timeliness requirement or a
procedural default sanction. Prison officials certainly have
the opportunity to address claims that were filed in some
procedurally defective manner; indeed, California, like the
vast majority of state prison systems, explicitly gives prison
administrators an opportunity to hear untimely or otherwise
procedurally defective grievances. Cal. Code Regs., tit. 15,
§ 3084.3(c). See generally Roosevelt, Exhaustion Under the
Prison Litigation Reform Act: The Consequence of Proce
dural Error, 52 Emory L. J. 1771, 1810, and n. 192 (2003)
(hereinafter Roosevelt). Because it is undisputed that the
PLRA mandates that prisoners exhaust their administrative
remedies before filing a federal lawsuit, prison officials will
have the opportunity to address prisoners’ claims before a
suit is filed.10
Second, the PLRA has already had the effect of reducing
the quantity of prison litigation, without the need for an
extrastatutory procedural default sanction. As petitioners
themselves point out, the number of civil rights suits filed by
prisoners in federal court dropped from 41,679 in 1995 to
25,504 in 2000, and the rate of prisoner filing dropped even
more dramatically during that period, from 37 prisoner suits
per 1,000 inmates to 19 suits per 1,000 inmates. By contrast,
between 2000 and 2004, the rate of filing remained relatively
constant, dropping only “slight[ly]” to approximately 16 suits
per 1,000 inmates. See Brief for Petitioners 21–22. The
10 In this regard, the majority’s reference to Coleman v. Thompson, 501
U. S. 722, 735, n. (1991), see ante, at 96, is perplexing. If a prison regula
tion explicitly grants prison officials discretion to consider untimely or
otherwise procedurally defective grievances, of course prison grievance
remedies would still be “available,” and thus unexhausted, if a prisoner
had not even tried to file a grievance simply because it was untimely or
otherwise procedurally defective.

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sharp drop in prison litigation between 1995 and 2000 oc
curred before the Seventh Circuit’s opinion in Pozo v.
McCaughtry, 286 F. 3d 1022 (2002), which was the first appel
late decision engrafting a procedural default sanction into
the PLRA. Prior to Pozo, the federal courts had regularly
assumed that the PLRA did not create any procedural de
fault sanction, and dismissals for failure to exhaust were
without prejudice. See Roosevelt 1780–1781 (discussing
cases). Thus, the PLRA, including its simple exhaustion re
quirement, was sufficient to reduce the quantity of prisoner
suits without any procedural default requirement. This is
not surprising: Because the exhaustion requirement always
ensures that prison officials have an opportunity to address
claims brought by prisoners before a federal lawsuit, some
prisoners will be “successful in the administrative process,
and others are persuaded by the proceedings not to file an
action in federal court,” ante, at 94, in part because “the
very fact of being heard . . . can mollify passions,” Booth v.
Churner, 532 U. S. 731, 737 (2001).11
Ordinary exhaustion also improves the quality of prisoner
suits. By giving prison officials an opportunity to address a
prisoner’s grievance before the initiation of the lawsuit, ordi
nary exhaustion “often results in the creation of an adminis
trative record that is helpful to the court,” ante, at 95.12
11 Without any support, the majority speculates that the drop in suits
filed by prisoners between 1995 and 2000 resulted from other provisions
of the PLRA. See ante, at 94, n. 4. Regardless, the aforementioned sta
tistics demonstrate that the procedural default sanction imposed by the
PLRA is unnecessary to reduce the quantity of prison litigation.
12 The majority also argues that ensuring strict compliance with strict
prison timeliness requirements (generally ranging from 48 hours to a
month, see n. 15, infra) will improve the quality of prisoner litigation
because if “a grievance is filed shortly after the event giving rise to the
grievance, witnesses can be identified and questioned while memories are
still fresh, and evidence can be gathered and preserved.” Ante, at 95.
While these are advantages to filing grievances soon after the alleged
injury occurs, courts regularly resolve § 1983 (and other) litigation without

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I acknowledge, of course, that the majority’s creation of a
waiver sanction for procedural missteps during the course of
exhaustion will have an even more significant effect in reduc
ing the number of lawsuits filed by prisoners. However, “no
legislation pursues its purposes at all costs. Deciding what
competing values will or will not be sacrificed to the achieve
ment of a particular objective is the very essence of legisla
tive choice—and it frustrates rather than effectuates legisla
tive intent simplistically to assume that whatever furthers
the statute’s primary objective must be the law.” Rodri
guez v. United States, 480 U. S. 522, 525–526 (1987) (per cu
riam) (emphasis deleted).
The competing values that Congress sought to effectuate
by enacting the PLRA were reducing the number of frivo
lous filings, on one hand, while preserving prisoners’ capacity
to file meritorious claims, on the other. As explained by
Senator Hatch when he introduced the legislation on the
Senate floor, the PLRA was needed because the quantity of
frivolous suits filed by prisoners was, in Senator Hatch’s
view, making it difficult for “courts to consider meritorious
claims.” 141 Cong. Rec. 27042 (1995). He continued: “In
deed, I do not want to prevent inmates from raising legiti
mate claims. This legislation will not prevent those claims
from being raised.” Ibid. Similarly, as Senator Thurmond,
a cosponsor of the bill, stated: “[The PLRA] will allow meri
torious claims to be filed, but gives the judge broader discre
tion to prevent frivolous and malicious lawsuits filed by
prison inmates.” Id., at 27044.
But the procedural default sanction created by this Court,
unlike the exhaustion requirement created by Congress, bars
such Draconian time limitations. At any rate, as discussed below, legis
lation does not pursue any one purpose at all costs, and the marginal ad
vantages of encouraging compliance with such short time limitations do
not justify judicially rewriting the PLRA’s exhaustion requirement by
engrafting a procedural default sanction into the statute.

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litigation at random, irrespective of whether a claim is meri
torious or frivolous.13 Consider, for example, an inmate who
has been raped while in prison. Such a scenario is far from
hypothetical; in enacting the Prison Rape Elimination Act of
2003, 42 U. S. C. § 15601 et seq. (2000 ed., Supp. III), Congress
estimated that some one million people have been sexually
assaulted in the Nation’s prisons over the last 20 years,
§ 15601(2). Although not all of these tragic incidents result
in constitutional violations, the sovereign does have a consti
tutional duty to “provide humane conditions of confinement,”
Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U. S. 825, 832 (1994). Accordingly,
those inmates who are sexually assaulted by guards, or
whose sexual assaults by other inmates are facilitated by
guards, have suffered grave deprivations of their Eighth
Amendment rights. Yet, the Court’s engraftment of a pro
cedural default sanction into the PLRA’s exhaustion require
ment risks barring such claims when a prisoner fails, inter
alia, to file her grievance (perhaps because she correctly
fears retaliation14) within strict time requirements that are
generally no more than 15 days, and that, in nine States, are
between 2 and 5 days.15
Much of the majority opinion seems to assume that, absent
the creation of a waiver sanction, prisoners will purposely
circumvent prison grievance proceedings. However, prison
ers generally lack both the incentive and the capacity to en
13 Indeed, if anything, it will have a worse effect on meritorious claims;
prisoners who file frivolous claims are probably more likely to be repeat
filers, and to learn the ins and outs of all procedural requirements.
14 See, e. g., Daskalea v. District of Columbia, 227 F. 3d 433, 437, 439
(CADC 2000) (discussing how female prisoner had her underwear confis
cated as “ ‘contraband’ ” and was placed in solitary confinement without a
mattress as a result of talking to prison officials about the sexual assaults
and harassment to which guards had subjected her).
15 For a comprehensive discussion of state prison grievance system filing
deadlines, see Brief for American Civil Liberties Union et al. as Amici
Curiae 6, n. 1, and Brief for Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization
of Yale Law School as Amicus Curiae A1–A7.

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gage in such evasive tactics. Because federal courts do not
provide any deference to administrative decisions by prison
officials and any later federal suit is de novo, prisoners—even
prisoners who are acting in bad faith—lack an incentive to
avoid filing an administrative grievance unless they fear re
taliation. Moreover, because prisoners must exhaust ad
ministrative remedies, prison officials can always thwart ef
forts by prisoners to avoid the grievance process by simply
exercising their discretion to excuse any procedural defect
in the presentation of the prisoners’ claims.
At any rate, there is a simple solution that would allow
courts to punish prisoners who seek to deliberately bypass
state administrative remedies, but that would not impose the
Draconian punishment of procedural default on prisoners
who make reasonable, good-faith efforts to comply with rele
vant administrative rules but, out of fear of retaliation, a
reasonable mistake of law, or simple inadvertence, make
some procedural misstep along the way. Federal courts
could simply exercise their discretion to dismiss suits
brought by the former group of litigants but not those
brought by the latter.
The majority argues that imposing a sanction against pris
oners who deliberately bypass administrative remedies
“neither has a statutory basis nor refers to a concept of ex
haustion from an existing body of law,” ante, at 98. In fact,
this criticism applies to the majority’s engraftment of an
overinclusive procedural default sanction into the PLRA.
If this Court insists upon rewriting § 1997e(a) in light of its
understanding of the statute’s purposes, surely the majority
should add to the statute no harsher a sanction for making
a procedural error during exhaustion than is necessary to
accomplish its policy goals.
Moreover, ordinary abstention principles allow federal dis
trict courts to dismiss suits brought by prisoners who have
deliberately bypassed available state remedies. Federal
courts have the power to decline jurisdiction in exceptional

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circumstances, including the need to promote “wise judicial
administration.” Quackenbush v. Allstate Ins. Co., 517 U. S.
706, 716 (1996) (internal quotation marks omitted). Indeed,
in Fay, we emphasized the discretion of district court judges
in embracing precisely such a deliberate bypass regime in
the habeas corpus statute. See 372 U. S., at 438. Applying
such a deliberate bypass sanction to the PLRA would ensure
that prisoners who act in bad faith are penalized, while not
interfering with the capacity of other inmates to litigate
meritorious constitutional claims.
In sum, the version of the PLRA Congress actually
enacted, which includes an exhaustion requirement but not
a procedural default sanction, is plainly sufficient to advance
the policy values identified by the Court. Moreover, if, as
the Court worries, there are many prisoners who act in bad
faith and purposely eschew administrative remedies, the im
position of a deliberate bypass standard would resolve that
problem, without depriving litigants who act in good faith
but nonetheless make a procedural error from obtaining judi
cial relief relating to their valid constitutional claims. The
majority’s holding is as unsupported by the policy concerns
it discusses as it is by the text of the statute.
V
The majority leaves open the question whether a prison
er’s failure to comply properly with procedural requirements
that do not provide a “meaningful opportunity for prisoners
to raise meritorious grievances” would bar the later filing of
a suit in federal court. Ante, at 102. What the majority
has in mind by a “meaningful opportunity” is unclear, and
this question is sure to breed a great deal of litigation in
federal courts in the years to come.
For example, in this case, respondent filed a second griev
ance after his first grievance was rejected, arguing that his
first grievance was in fact timely because he was challenging
petitioners’ continuing prohibition on his capacity to partici

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pate in Catholic observances, such as Confession, Holy Week
services, and Bible study. The prison again rejected this
second grievance on timeliness grounds, even though the de
nial of respondent’s capacity to engage in religious activities
was clearly ongoing, and thus had occurred within the pris
on’s 15-day statute of limitations. See 403 F. 3d 620, 622
(CA9 2005). Assuming respondent explicitly requested the
restoration of his right to engage in religious activities
within 15 days of the filing of his second grievance and prison
officials denied the request, did petitioners’ grievance proce
dures fail to provide respondent with a “meaningful opportu
nity” to raise his claim, because, in light of the continuing
nature of the injury respondent is challenging, his grievance
was in fact timely? Cf. Klehr v. A. O. Smith Corp., 521 U. S.
179, 189 (1997) (explaining that, under the Clayton Act, each
overt act in the case of a “continuing violation,” such as a
price-fixing conspiracy, is sufficient to restart the statute of
limitations).
What about cases involving other types of procedural mis
steps? Does a 48-hour limitations period furnish a meaning
ful opportunity for a prisoner to raise meritorious grievances
in the context of a juvenile who has been raped and repeat
edly assaulted, with the knowledge and assistance of guards,
while in detention? See Minix v. Pazera, No. 1:04 CV 447
RM, 2005 WL 1799538, *2 (ND Ind., July 27, 2005). Does a
prison grievance system provide such a meaningful opportu
nity when women prisoners fail to file timely grievances re
lating to a pattern of rape and sexual harassment throughout
a city’s prisons, because they correctly fear retaliation if they
file such complaints? See Women Prisoners v. District of
Columbia, 877 F. Supp. 634 (DC 1994). Are such remedies
meaningful when a prisoner files a grievance concerning a
prison official having encouraged him to commit suicide,
which the prisoner reasonably thinks raises one claim, but
which prison officials interpret to raise two separate
claims—one related to the guard’s comments and one related

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to the prisoner’s failure to receive health care—and thus dis
miss for violating a prison regulation against including more
than one claim in a single grievance? See Harper v. Laufen
berg, No. 04–C–699–C, 2005 WL 79009, *3 (WD Wis., Jan. 6,
2005). What if prison officials dismiss a timely filed appeal
because the prisoner explains that the prison will take two
weeks to finish making certain copies of relevant documents
by sending a letter to the Secretary of the Department of
Corrections, rather than to the Secretary of Inmate Griev
ances and Appeals, as he should have under the prison regu
lations? See Keys v. Craig, 160 Fed. Appx. 125 (CA3 2005)
(per curiam). More generally, are remedies meaningful
when prison officials refuse to hear a claim simply because a
prisoner makes some hypertechnical procedural error? See
Spruill v. Gillis, 372 F. 3d 218, 232 (CA3 2004) (imposing a
procedural default sanction in the PLRA, but stating that
compliance with grievance proceedings need only be “ ‘sub
stantial’ ”); Giano v. Goord, 380 F. 3d 670, 676–678 (CA2
2004) (stating that failure to comply with procedural require
ments in grievance proceedings may be excused based on
special circumstances, such as a prisoner’s reasonable, but
mistaken, understanding of prison regulations).
Depending on the answer to questions like these, the ma
jority’s interpretation of the PLRA may cause the statute to
be vulnerable to constitutional challenges. “[T]he right of
access to the courts is an aspect of the First Amendment
right to petition the Government for redress of grievances.”
Bill Johnson’s Restaurants, Inc. v. NLRB, 461 U. S. 731, 741
(1983). Accordingly, the Constitution guarantees that pris
oners, like all citizens, have a reasonably adequate opportu
nity to raise constitutional claims before impartial judges,
see, e. g., Lewis v. Casey, 518 U. S. 343, 351 (1996). More
over, because access to the courts is a fundamental right,
see id., at 346, government-drawn classifications that impose
substantial burdens on the capacity of a group of citizens
to exercise that right require searching judicial examination

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123 Cite as: 548 U. S. 81 (2006)
Stevens, J., dissenting
under the Equal Protection Clause, see, e. g., Lyng v. Auto
mobile Workers, 485 U. S. 360, 370 (1988).
The correct interpretation of the PLRA would obviate the
need for litigation over any of these issues. More impor
tantly, the correct interpretation of the statute would recog
nize that, in enacting the PLRA, Members of Congress cre
ated a rational regime designed to reduce the quantity of
frivolous prison litigation while adhering to their constitu
tional duty “to respect the dignity of all persons,” even
“those convicted of heinous crimes.” Roper v. Simmons,
543 U. S. 551, 560 (2005). Because today’s decision ignores
that duty, I respectfully dissent.