After a correctional officer filed a retaliatory false report against Jory Strizich that placed him in solitary confinement for eight months, Mr. Strizich attempted to get relief but was unable to access the prison’s convoluted grievance process. The MacArthur Justice Center is fighting for prisoners like Mr. Strizich, who are prevented from getting their day in court because of erroneous interpretations of the Prison Litigation Reform Act’s exhaustion provision.
While incarcerated at a Montana prison, Jory Strizich had a confrontation with a correctional officer, who asked Mr. Strizich, “What are you going to do? Grieve and sue me like you do everyone else?” and then threatened to teach Mr. Strizich a lesson on respecting authority. Immediately after the confrontation, the officer planted a substance in Mr. Strizich’s belongings and made a false report that placed Mr. Strizich in solitary confinement for eight months. It was only after the prison eventually tested the substance and confirmed it was not narcotics that he was released from solitary.
While in solitary confinement awaiting his disciplinary hearing, Mr. Strizich asked the prison’s grievance coordinator what he could do to seek relief for the officer’s retaliatory false report. The coordinator told him that he could not use the grievance process because the issue was “disciplinary related” and should instead utilize the disciplinary and classification appeal processes.
After spending several months completing those appeal processes, Mr. Strizich persuaded the grievance coordinator to give him permission to file a late grievance, suggesting that she had read the scope of “non-grievable” issues too broadly. Despite Mr. Strizich being granted an extension, another prison official rejected his first-level grievance because “disciplinary has its own appeal processes.” And when Mr. Strizich filed a second-level grievance, another prison official ignored the grievance coordinator’s grant of extension and rejected the grievance as “untimely.”
Mr. Strizich took his complaint to the district court, which granted summary judgement against Mr. Strizich for failure to exhaust the grievance process in a timely manner. It asserted that he “presented no evidence” that he was thwarted from filing a timely grievance.
The MacArthur Justice Center represents Mr. Strizich on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, arguing that the grievance process was unavailable under all three examples identified by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Ross v. Blake, which explained that a prison’s grievance process is “unavailable” if it serves as a dead-end, is so opaque that it is impossible to understand, or where prison officials “thwart” an incarcerated person’s ability to access the process.
UPDATE
The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court’s decision. It held that Mr. Strizich provided sufficient evidence showing that the grievance process was unavailable to him when he was reliably informed by the grievance coordinator that he could not obtain relief through that process. The Ninth Circuit’s opinion affirms Mr. Strizich’s right to have his day in court when prison officials are responsible for a prisoner’s inability to obtain access to a prison’s internal administrative remedy procedures.