Morales

MEMORANDUM **

Petitioner Benito B. Morales (“Morales”) is incarcerated in the Sierra Conservation Center Prison Facility in Jamestown, California. On July 20, 2000, Morales filed a pro se class action complaint in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California alleging that prison officials violated the class members’ First, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 by, inter alia, keeping them in “lockdown” following a prison riot and restricting prisoners’ diet and exercise regimes, denying medical visits, phone use, visits and participation in work, school, library and self-help programs.

The district court dismissed petitioner’s complaint, sua sponte, on the ground that he failed to exhaust his administrative remedies as required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act (“PLRA”). We reverse.

After the district court’s decision in this case, we issued a decision in Wyatt v. Terhune, 315 F.3d 1108, 1119 (9th Cir. 2003), cert. denied sub nom. Alameida v. Wyatt, 540 U.S. 810 , 124 S.Ct. 50 , 157 L.Ed.2d 23 (2003), in which we held that a district court may not dismiss sua sponte a petitioner’s complaint for failure to exhaust…