WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week about who decides if prisoners have exhausted all of their available remedies when filing grievances, weighing the scopes of the Seventh Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the Prison Litigation Reform Act.
Kyle Richards, an inmate at Michigan’s Baraga Correctional Facility in the Upper Peninsula, filed 26 grievance forms between June 6, 2019, and April 23, 2020, claiming that Resident Unit Manager Thomas Perttu was sexually harassing him. Richards also alleged that Perttu destroyed claims during this period and that Perttu threatened to kill him if more grievances were filed.
Perttu v. Richards examines whether prisoners have a right to a jury trial in exhaustion cases where the disputed facts are connected to the main issue of the lawsuit or if a judge should oversee these cases.
The United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan ruled that a judge could hear cases with this overlap. However, in March 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which includes Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, overturned this ruling, saying a jury trial is required under the Seventh Amendment.
The Prison Litigation Reform Act, or the PLRA, was enacted in 1996 as a way to decrease federal civil litigation involving prisoners, and states that “no civil action shall be brought regarding prison conditions until the plaintiff has exhausted administrative remedies.”
In an amicus brief supporting Perttu, the state of Ohio, 23 other states and the District of Columbia said the PLRA aims to “reduce the quantity and improve the quality of prisoner suits.”
“There’s not really a dispute that the inmate has a right to have a jury decide his underlying claim,” said Kevin Russell, a partner at Russell and Woofter LLC who filed an amicus brief on behalf of numerous law professors across the country.
Russell instead said that the case looks at a potential overlap in jurisdiction that may arise as a judge typically rules on exhaustion claims and a jury rules on the merits of that case. In this instance, these two are intertwined.
During the oral arguments, the Justices touched on the lack of historical precedent, as exhaustion claims did not exist at the time of the Seventh Amendment.
A lawyer for Perttu argued that equity courts at the time heard cases involving traditional equitable defenses and were historically seen by judges.
“We know that exhaustion has its roots in equity,” said Michigan Solicitor General Ann M. Sherman, representing Perttu. “And we think that the most appropriate analogs here are equitable defenses.”
Lori Alvino McGill, a lawyer for Richards, argued that despite a lack of direct historical precedence, functional consideration supported a jury trial.
“Even though there wasn’t an affirmative defense called ‘exhaustion’ in 1791, there were affirmative defenses to tort liability damages, including the statute of limitations,” said McGill. “And we know that juries decided factual disputes with regard to an affirmative defense.”
When hearing arguments in Perttu’s favor, Justice Sonia Sotomayor appeared skeptical of the claims that allowing a jury trial would result in increased prisoner litigation.
Sotomayor cited previous cases from the Second Circuit, where she used to be a judge.
“In those 12 years, only five cases has there been litigation over whether or not there was exhaustion because only five cases was it interwound with the merits,” she said.
Elliot Gaiser, Ohio Solicitor General, said that this will lead to a decrease in the number of cases making it to a jury trial, easing the burden on state attorneys and prisons.
“You won’t have courts inundated with jury trials about the relatively mundane questions of whether a prisoner complied with the state rules for administrative remedies before they went to federal court,” he said.
A ruling in favor of Perttu would mean that cases with an overlap of exhaustion and merits claims would require a judge ruling before it can be sent to a jury trial.
A ruling in favor of Richards would allow cases that fall under this category to be tried in front of a jury.
Clark Neily, Senior Vice President for legal studies at the Cato Institute which filed an amicus brief in support of Richards, said that a ruling in this way would “hopefully reinforce the Supreme Court’s commitment to the basic constitutional structure” of juries deciding disputes between citizens and the government.
There did not appear to be a consensus among the judges. Neily said this ruling could go either way.
“My sense it will likely be pretty narrow, given the back and forth the argument,” said Neily. “I would expect the decision to be written fairly narrowly.”
A ruling is expected in summer 2025.
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