Tyler v. Bett
Tyler v. Bett
Opinion of the Court
ORDER
Wisconsin inmate Matthew Tyler sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that corrections officials denied him access to the courts by refusing to give him copies of a previously submitted grievance regarding a disciplinary conviction. The parties consented to the entry of judgment by a magistrate judge, who ultimately granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss due to Tyler’s purported failure to exhaust his administrative remedies as required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (“PLRA”), Pub.L. 104-134, 110 Stat. 1321 (1996). The magistrate judge also denied Tyler’s subsequent motion to alter or amend the judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e). We review the dismissal de novo. McCoy v. Gilbert, 270 F.3d 503, 508 (7th Cir. 2001).
In Wisconsin, judicial review of a prison disciplinary conviction begins in state court by way of a petition for a writ of certiorari. As a prelude to seeking judicial review, however, a prisoner must first exhaust his administrative remedies. State ex rel. Hensley v. Endicott, 245 Wis.2d 607, 629 N.W.2d 686, 690 (2001). Tyler wanted to challenge a disciplinary conviction in state court, so to prove that he had exhausted, his administrative remedies, he twice requested copies of a past grievance form from the inmate complaint examiner (“ICE”) at his prison. Each time, the ICE denied his request, explaining that the grievance was confidential. Tyler filed his petition for a writ of certiorari in state court without a copy of the grievance, but the court denied the writ.
Tyler attributes the denial of his state petition to the defendants’ frustration of his efforts to obtain copies of the grievance; when he then sued for denial of his right of access to the courts, the defendants countered, and the magistrate judge agreed, that Tyler had not exhausted all administrative remedies that were available to him under the Wisconsin inmate complaint system. However, an examination of Wisconsin’s inmate grievance system, Wis. Admin. Code § DOC 310 (2002), reveals that there were no administrative remedies available to Tyler, because the Wisconsin grievance system explicitly prohibits inmates from grieving the denial of a request for records. Id. § DOC 310.08(2)(f); see also Tratz v. Zunker, 201 Wis.2d 774, 550 N.W.2d 141, 142-43 (1996). Accordingly, the PLRA does not prohibit him from filing suit in federal court. See McCoy, 270 F.3d at 511; Perez v. Wisconsin Dept. of Corr., 182 F.3d 532, 534 (7th Cir. 1999).
Despite this error, we believe that a remand would be unnecessary due to the lack of merit in Tyler’s § 1983 claim. Tyler’s claim is based on a Wisconsin circuit court’s denial of his petition for a writ of certiorari. On appeal of the circuit court’s decision in State ex rel. Tyler v. Bett,
As we affirm the district court’s order of dismissal due to the lack of merit in Tyler’s § 1983 claim, the dismissal is with prejudice. See Paganis v. Blonstein, 3 F.3d 1067, 1071 (7th Cir. 1993).
AFFIRMED.
. Although Tyler does not explicitly name the lawsuit in which his writ of certiorari was
Reference
- Full Case Name
- Matthew TYLER v. John BETT
- Status
- Published