Morgan v. Trierweiler
| Decision Date | 05 May 2023 |
| Docket Number | 22-178 |
| Parties | Asheton S. Morgan, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Tony Trierweiler, Warden; John Davids, Deputy Warden; Jared Buchin, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
Argued: March 10, 2023
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan at Marquette. No. 2:19-cv-00003-Jane M Beckering, District Judge.
ARGUED:
Daniel E. Manville, Breia Lassiter, MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF LAW, East Lansing, Michigan, for Appellant.
Gregory E. Crouch, MICHIGAN DEPARTMENT OF ATTORNEY GENERAL Lansing, Michigan, for Appellees.
ON BRIEF:
Daniel E. Manville, MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF LAW, East Lansing, Michigan, for Appellant.
Gregory E. Crouch, Jennifer A. Foster, MICHIGAN DEPARTMENT OF ATTORNEY GENERAL, Lansing, Michigan, for Appellees.
Before: GIBBONS, BUSH, and MATHIS, Circuit Judges.
Former inmate Asheton Morgan sued Michigan prison officials for allegedly violating his free exercise rights by failing to provide him with meals consistent with his religion. Morgan filed a grievance with the prison five days after he arrived alleging the failure to provide the proper meals. But the district court granted summary judgment to defendants based on Morgan's failure to exhaust administrative remedies pursuant to the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995, 110 Stat. 1321, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 1997e et seq. (PLRA). The PLRA requires prisoners to follow a prison's grievance procedures before challenging prison conditions in court. The district court held that Morgan's grievance only covered the failure to provide meals up until the date of the grievance, so Morgan should have filed further grievances as to the alleged free exercise violation. But Morgan already put the prison officials on notice of unconstitutional conduct, and therefore requiring repeat grievances for the same course of conduct would exceed the requirements of the PLRA. Accordingly, we REVERSE.
Morgan is a devout Muslim. Consistent with his religious beliefs, he adheres to a Halal diet, which carries certain restrictions based on the tenets of Islam.
Morgan had been approved for a religious meal accommodation in prison. But after he was transferred to the Bellamy Creek Correctional Facility (IBC) on September 13, 2016, he claims that he was not provided religious meals. In fact, IBC apparently did not have the capability to produce religious meals, so he informed "numerous staff members" that he was "improperly housed." Morgan filed a formal grievance five days after his transfer, on September 18, 2016. His grievance alleged the following:
Informed transport officers, RN registered Nurse, C/O Dewey, Lt. Gilbert, and his superior officer that IBC does not offer my religious vegan meal.... PD 05.03.140 and OP 05.03.140 [citing prison policies]. On these dates I was forced by IBC staff to violate my religious guidelines by eating food provided by IBC staff that was not in accordance with Halal tenets which violates PD 05.1.140 and OP 05.01.140 and violates my constitutional right to "Freedom of Religion." And staff refused to send me to a facility that offers my diet.
R.94-5, PageID 900. The prison officials reached the merits of Morgan's grievance on October 7, 2016:
Chaplain Thompson confirms that prisoner Morgan is approved for a religious diet.... The religious diet menu is not available at IBC because the facility is not a designated location for the Vegan menu designed to meet the religious dietary needs of prisoners. In accordance with PD [Policy Directive] 04.05.120, prisoner Morgan will be served meals from the same menus available to general population prisoners while housed in Administrative Segregation at IBC. SCC [Security Classification Committee] will determine prisoner Morgan's release and/or appropriate transfer from IBC's Administrative Segregation Unit with consideration for safety and security concerns.
Report and Recommendation, R.122, PageID 1492. Morgan proceeded with two more stages of appeal. His Step II appeal, dated October 17, 2016, stated, "I am still being denied my rights to practice my religion." Id. This appeal was denied on October 25. Id. And his Step III appeal, also denied, stated, Step III Grievance Report, R.94-5, PagelD 897-98.
On December 18, 2018, Morgan filed a complaint in Michigan federal court. He alleged that IBC staff "forced [him] to eat food in violation of [his] Islamic Beliefs." Complaint, R.1, PageID 9. The case was pared down to free exercise claims against prison officials. The magistrate judge recommended summary judgment for defendants on those claims based on Morgan's failure to exhaust administrative remedies. The magistrate judge read Morgan's grievance as applying only to September 13, 2016, so any conduct after that date would not be covered. According to the magistrate judge, "prison officials were not given an opportunity to address Morgan's claims" that relate to conduct after that date.
Morgan filed objections to the Report and Recommendation.[1] As relevant here, he argued that there was a single ongoing violation of his constitutional rights and that this argument had been sufficiently raised in his grievance. But the district court believed this argument was waived because, in the court's view, it had not been raised before the magistrate judge, and regardless, the district court adopted the magistrate judge's reasoning that the only conduct covered by the grievance is that on September 13, 2016. The district court reiterated that the outcome "rests not on Plaintiff's failure to support his allegations against Defendants relating to events after September 13, 2016 but on Plaintiff's failure to submit a grievance relating to these events." Opinion and Order, R.127, PageID 1536. Accordingly, the district court adopted the magistrate judge's report and recommendation as the opinion of the court. Morgan timely appealed.
We review a grant of summary judgment de novo. Miles v. S. Cent. Hum. Res. Agency, Inc., 946 F.3d 883, 887 (6th Cir. 2020). Summary judgment is appropriate if "the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(a). "[T]his Court must view all the evidence and draw all reasonable inferences in the light most favorable to the non-moving party." Rhinehart v. Scutt, 894 F.3d 721, 735 (6th Cir. 2018) (citing Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 255 (1986)). Because defendants carry the burden of proof for exhaustion, they bear an "initial summary judgment burden [that] is higher in that [they] must show that the record contains evidence satisfying [their] burden of persuasion" and "that no reasonable jury would be free to disbelieve it." Doe v. Snyder, 945 F.3d 951, 961 (6th Cir. 2019) (quoting Surles v. Andison, 678 F.3d 452, 455-56 (6th Cir. 2012)). Summary judgment is appropriate in this context only if "there is no genuine dispute of material fact that the plaintiff failed to exhaust." Id. at 961 (citing Risher v. Lappin, 639 F.3d 236, 240 (6th Cir. 2011)).
Congress enacted the PLRA to "reduce the quantity and improve the quality of prisoner suits." Lamb v. Kendrick, 52 F.4th 286, 292 (6th Cir. 2022) (citations omitted). To that end, Congress decreed that "[n]o action shall be brought with respect to prison conditions under [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. The exhaustion requirement is intended "to allow prison officials 'a fair opportunity' to address grievances on the merits, to correct prison errors that can and should be corrected and to create an administrative record for those disputes that eventually end up in court." Reed-Bey v. Pramstaller, 603 F.3d 322, 324 (6th Cir. 2010) (quoting Woodford v. Ngo, 548 U.S. 75, 94-95 (2006)). The Supreme Court has held that prisoners must complete "proper exhaustion," i.e., must use "all steps that the [prison] holds out." Woodford, 548 U.S. at 90. "Compliance with prison grievance procedures, therefore, is all that is required by the PLRA to 'properly exhaust.'" Jones v. Bock, 549 U.S. 199, 218 (2007).
Until 2007, the Sixth Circuit imposed "several procedural rules designed to implement this exhaustion requirement and facilitate early judicial screening" of prisoner claims. Id. at 202-03; see, e.g., Burton v. Jones, 321 F.3d 569, 574-75 (6th Cir. 2003). The Supreme Court held that these rules exceed the scope of the PLRA, and that "crafting and imposing them exceeds the proper limits on the judicial role." Jones v. Bock, 549 U.S. at 203. For example, the Supreme Court held that the Sixth Circuit rule requiring prisoners to identify each defendant to be sued in their first grievance "lack[ed] a textual basis in the PLRA." Id. at 217. The emphasis, then, is on the grievance procedures themselves under "usual procedural practice" and "normal pleading rules." Id. at 214, 218; Lamb, 52 F.4th at 292. In addition, only remedies that are "available," 42 U.S.C. § 1997e, must be exhausted. A grievance process is not considered available where officers are "unable or consistently unwilling" to provide relief, a process is "so opaque" as to be "incapable of use," or prison employees "thwart inmates from taking advantage of a grievance process through machination, misrepresentation, or intimidation." Ross v. Blake, 578 U.S. 632, 643-44 (2016).
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