James McBride v. S. Lopez

The Prison Litigation Reform Act (“PLRA”) requires the exhaustion of available prison administrative remedies before a prisoner may file suit in federal district court. The requirement may, however, be excused under certain limited circumstances where the intervening actions or conduct by prison officials render the inmate grievance procedure unavailable. In this case, for the first time in our circuit, we consider a claim that a threat of retalia tory action by a prison guard had the effect of rendering the prison grievance system unavailable so as to excuse the prisoner’s failure to meet the time limitation for filing a grievance. We join other circuits in holding that fear of retaliation may be sufficient to render the inmate grievance procedure unavailable, and we approve the test applied in the Eleventh Circuit that requires both a subjective and objective basis for the fear. We hold in this case that McBride failed to show an objective basis for his belief that prison officials would retaliate against him for filing a grievance. We therefore affirm the district court’s dismissal of the complaint.

We observe as a preliminary matter that we decide this appeal after…