State ex rel. Hensley v. Endicott

245 Wis.2d 607

2001 WI 105

629 N.W.2d 686

STATE of Wisconsin EX REL. Spriggie HENSLEY, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Jeffrey P. ENDICOTT, and Wisconsin Department of Corrections, Defendants-Respondents-Petitioners.

No. 00-0076.

Supreme Court of Wisconsin.

Oral argument May 30, 2001.

Decided July 11, 2001.

For the defendants-respondents-petitioners the cause was argued by Michael D. Oeser, assistant attorney general, with whom on the briefs was James E. Doyle, attorney general.

For the plaintiff-appellant there was a brief by Beth Ermatinger Hanan and Reinhart, Boerner, Van Deuren, Norris & Rieselbach, S.C., Milwaukee, and oral argument by Beth E. Hanan.

An amicus curiae brief was filed by Michael P. May and Boardman, Suhr, Curry & Field LLP, Madison, on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin Foundation.

¶ 1. JON P. WILCOX, J.

This is a review of a published decision of the court of appeals, State ex rel. Hensley v. Endicott, 2000 WI App 189, 238 Wis. 2d 649, 618 N.W.2d 245, reversing an order of the Dane County Circuit Court, Steven D. Ebert, Judge. There are two issues. The first issue is whether there is a common law futility exception to the Prisoner Litigation Reform Act's (PLRA), codified at Wis. Stat. § 801.02(7)(b)(1997-98),¹ statutory exhaustion requirement. We find that the statute is clear on its face in requiring prisoners to exhaust their administrative remedies prior to bringing an action in circuit court. Accordingly, there is no common law futility exception to the PLRA. The second issue is whether the court of appeals' holding that Wis. Stat. § 227.40, a declaratory judgment statute, trumps the PLRA was contrary to rules of statutory construction. Because the PLRA is more specific and passed later in time than § 227.40, it should have been applied to require the prisoner to exhaust his administrative remedies.

I

¶ 2. Spriggie Hensley (Hensley), incarcerated in the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage County, filed a complaint for declaratory judgment against the Department of Corrections (DOC) in Dane County Circuit Court challenging the validity of two administrative regulations on First Amendment and Equal Protection grounds. The first regulation prohibited prisoners from having pornographic materials while the second prohibited prisoners from having cassette tapes and tape players. The DOC responded with a motion to dismiss because Hensley failed to plead exhaustion of administrative remedies per the PLRA. Although the circuit court found that Hensley stated a claim, it concluded that he was required to exhaust his administrative remedies under the PLRA and therefore dismissed his complaint. Hensley appealed.

¶ 3. The court of appeals reversed the decision of the circuit court. In so doing, the court observed that Hensley claimed the rules "are unconstitutional; and that question is unsuited to resolution through an inmate complaint review process in a particular correctional institution." Hensley,2000 WI App 189, ¶ 5. The court then found two cases "persuasive" on the issue of exhaustion, Cravatt v. Thomas, 399 F.Supp. 956 (W.D. Wis. 1975), and Green v. Nelson, 442 F. Supp. 1047 (D. Conn. 1977). Hensley,2000 WI App 189, ¶¶ 6-7. Sharing the "sentiments" expressed in those cases, the court of appeals asserted "that to require Hensley to advance his constitutional challenges to the rules in question before his institution's complaint review committees and appeal personnel as a precondition to raising them is unnecessary." Id. at ¶¶ 7-8. Instead, the court found that Wis. Stat. § 806.04, which sets forth the general rules governing declaratory relief, and Wis. Stat. § 227.40(1), which deals with contesting the validity of administrative rules through declaratory judgment proceedings, trumped the PLRA's exhaustion requirement. Id. at ¶ 3.

¶ 4. We subsequently accepted the DOC's petition for review.

II

[1, 2]

¶ 5. Before reaching the first substantive issue, we must address Hensley's threshold assertion, urged at oral argument, that we should decline to review whether there is a common law futility exception to the PLRA because the underlying dispute in this case has been rendered moot by the implementation of an emergency administrative rule, temporarily supplanting the particular prison rules challenged by Hensley. Wis. Admin. Reg. No. 543 (Mar. 2001). Even though an issue may be moot, this court will nevertheless address that issue if: (1) the issue is of great public importance; (2) the situation occurs so frequently that a definitive decision is necessary to guide circuit courts; (3) the issue is likely to arise again and a decision from the court would alleviate uncertainty; or (4) the issue will likely be repeated but evades appellate review because the appellate process cannot be completed or even undertaken in time to have a practical effect on the parties. State v. Gray, 225 Wis. 2d 39, 66, 590 N.W.2d 918 (1999). Here, the first issue is whether the PLRA applies to a broad class of constitutional challenges raised by prisoners. This issue is likely to arise again and a decision from this court will alleviate uncertainty circuit courts may have on whether they should find that a particular prisoner has exhausted his or her administrative remedies as a precondition for a challenge to a condition of the facility in which he or she is confined. Thus, we will address this issue as presented and briefed by the parties. Id. For the sake of completeness, we will address the second related issue of whether Wis. Stat. § 227.40(1) trumps the PLRA on the requirement of exhaustion.

[3]

¶ 6. Hensley asserts that there is common law futility exception to the PLRA's exhaustion requirement. He therefore presents an issue of statutory construction. We review questions of statutory construction de novo. State ex rel. Cramer v. Court of Appeals, 2000 WI 86, ¶ 17, 236 Wis. 2d 473, 613 N.W.2d 591.

[4]

¶ 7. The analytical framework for Wisconsin courts when confronted with a dispute that necessarily entails resolution of a point of statutory construction is well-established law. When we are confronted with a case that presents an unresolved point of statutory construction, we engage in statutory interpretation to discern the legislative intent. State v. Sprosty, 227 Wis. 2d 316, 323-24, 595 N.W.2d 692 (1999). As we have previously commented, "[o]ur duty to fulfill legislative intent ensures that we uphold the separation of powers by not substituting judicial policy views for the views of the legislature." Cramer, 2000 WI 86 at ¶ 17.

[5, 6]

¶ 8. In adhering to our adjudicative role, we employ our established analytical framework on a point of statutory construction, which avoids invading the province of the legislature. First, we look at the plain language of the statute. Id. at ¶ 18. Where the language of the statute is clear, we do not look beyond the language of the statute to discern legislative intent. Sprosty, 227 Wis. 2d at 324. It is only upon a finding of ambiguity that a court turns to extrinsic materials in order to discern the legislative intent. Cramer,2000 WI 86 at ¶ 18.

[7]

¶ 9. The PLRA, codified at Wis. Stat. § 801.02(7)(b), provides:

No prisoner may commence a civil action or special proceeding, including a petition for a common law writ of certiorari, with respect to the prison or jail conditions in the facility in which he or she is or has been incarcerated, imprisoned or detained until the person has exhausted all available administrative remedies that the department of corrections has promulgated by rule or, in the case of prisoners not in the custody of the department of corrections, that the sheriff, superintendent or other keeper of a jail or house of correction has reduced to writing and provided reasonable notice of to the prisoners.

The plain language of the PLRA here indicates the intent of the legislature. It encompasses all prisoners who challenge "conditions in the facility in which he or she is or has been incarcerated, imprisoned, or detained" through civil actions or special proceedings, as well as common law writs of certiorari. Id. No such proceeding can be commenced unless the prisoner "exhausted all available administrative remedies." Id. The plain language contains no exception regarding futility. It is not within our judicial function to insert the phrase "where they are not shown to be futile" after "administrative remedies" in the statute. Therefore, we conclude that the plain language of the PLRA requires prisoners to exhaust all their administrative remedies prior to challenging a condition in their respective facilities through any civil actions or special proceedings, including common law writs of certiorari.

¶ 10. In interpreting Wisconsin's PLRA on the issue of exhaustion, we can take guidance from the United States Supreme Court's recent interpretation of the federal PLRA, upon which the Wisconsin PLRA is based, in Booth v. Churner, 121 S. Ct. 1819 (2001).²See Cramer,2000 WI 86 at ¶ 38. In Booth, a state prisoner in Pennsylvania brought a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action in federal court alleging violation of his Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment by corrections officers.³121 S. Ct. at 1821. Booth, like Hensley, asserted that he was not required to exhaust his administrative remedies when the "prison's process simply cannot satisfy the inmate's sole demand, the odds of keeping the matter out of court are slim." Id. at 1823. Therefore, the Supreme Court focused on the phrase "administrative remedies. . .available" in the federal PLRA which is the same as "available administrative remedies" in Wisconsin's PLRA. Id. To resolve the issue raised by Booth, the Supreme Court looked to the context of this phrase and the statutory history of the federal PLRA. Id. at 1824. Both points are instructive in the present case regarding Wisconsin's PLRA.

¶ 11. On the first point, the context of the...