PLRA Exhaustion and Transfer-Caused Unavailability: Edwards v. Destefano

Introduction

This commentary examines the Second Circuit’s decision in Edwards v. Destefano (23-7515), issued April 9, 2025. Raheem Edwards, a detainee at the Nassau County Correctional Center (“NCCC”), alleged that corrections officers subjected him to excessive force, denied medical treatment, and destroyed personal property in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The district court granted summary judgment to the defendants on the ground that Edwards failed to exhaust administrative remedies under the Prison Litigation Reform Act (“PLRA”), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a). On appeal, the Second Circuit reversed, holding that Edwards’s transfer to another facility rendered the NCCC grievance procedure “unavailable” for PLRA purposes and thus excused exhaustion.

Key issues addressed:

Does an inmate’s sudden transfer before filing a grievance render the prison grievance process “unavailable” under the PLRA?
How do the Second Circuit’s precedents—especially Romano v. Ulrich—apply to transfers that occur within the formal deadline for grievances?
What tolling mechanisms and handbook provisions govern the timing of grievance submissions?

Parties:

Appellant: Raheem Edwards, pro se prisoner (represented on appeal by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP).
Appellees: Corrections officers Michael Destefano, Steven Schneider, Peter McNamara, Eugene O’Brien, Edin Carpio, Brian Anderson, and Henry Picoli (represented by Nassau County Attorney’s Office).

Summary of the Judgment

The Second Circuit reversed the district court’s grant of summary judgment for the defendants and remanded for further proceedings. Applying a de novo standard to summary judgment, the panel found that:

Under the PLRA, exhaustion of available administrative remedies is mandatory, but only if those remedies are truly “available.”
An administrative procedure is “unavailable” when it operates as a “dead end,” is “opaque,” or is actively obstructed by prison administrators.
Edwards was transferred seven days after the alleged assault—within the five-day grievance window provided by the NCCC Inmate Handbook—and had already made informal complaints that tolled the deadline.
The handbook contained no mechanism for filing a grievance post-transfer, effectively turning the process into a “dead end.”
Edwards’s transfer was sudden and without advance notice, so he cannot be faulted for failing to file a formal grievance before removal.

Accordingly, the panel concluded that Edwards exhausted all “available” remedies and that summary judgment for the defendants was improper.

Analysis

Precedents Cited

Ross v. Blake, 578 U.S. 632 (2016): Established that exhaustion is mandatory but only when administrative remedies are “available” to the prisoner. Defined three categories of unavailability: “dead end,” “opaque,” and “thwarted” grievance systems.
Booth v. Churner, 532 U.S. 731 (2001): Held that exhaustion is required regardless of the relief offered by administrative procedures.
Hayes v. Dahlke, 976 F.3d 259 (2d Cir. 2020): Quoted and applied Ross’s three categories of administrative unavailability.
Romano v. Ulrich, 49 F.4th 148 (2d Cir. 2022): Recognized that a sudden transfer before the grievance deadline can render a grievance procedure a “dead end” and thus unavailable.
Williams v. Priatno, 829 F.3d 118 (2d Cir. 2016): Clarified the burden-shifting framework for pleading and proving failure to exhaust under the PLRA.

Legal Reasoning

The court’s reasoning proceeds in three steps:

Mandatory Exhaustion and the “Available” Exception: The PLRA’s exhaustion requirement is strict but subject to an “available” remedy exception. Under Ross and Hayes, an unavailable procedure excuses exhaustion.
Transfer-Caused Unavailability: Applying Romano, the panel held that Edwards’s transfer within seven days of the April 19, 2013 incident effectively prevented him from filing a timely grievance. Even though informal reporting tolled the five-day deadline, the handbook provided no post-transfer submission route—no off-site mailing address, no electronic filing, no exceptions.
Notice and Proactivity: Because Edwards had no advance notice of his transfer and repeatedly sought to resolve complaints both before and after the move (via oral reports, letters to external agencies, requests for medical treatment and property inventory), the court declined to fault him for the “premature curtailment” of his grievance opportunity.

Impact

This decision underscores and extends the Second Circuit’s protective approach to PLRA exhaustion:

Prison officials cannot rely on technical non-compliance with grievance rules when those rules are functionally inaccessible.
Transfers without procedural safeguards (advance notice, post-transfer grievance slots, mailing instructions) risk rendering formal grievance mechanisms “dead ends.”
Prison systems should revise handbooks and regulations to ensure continuity of grievance rights upon transfer—e.g., by allowing grievances to follow inmates or be filed remotely.
Future plaintiffs facing summary judgment motions for failure to exhaust may cite Edwards to show that sudden transfers can excuse formal exhaustion.

Complex Concepts Simplified

PLRA Exhaustion Requirement: A federal law that forces prisoners to use a prison’s internal grievance process before suing over conditions or treatment.
“Available” Administrative Remedy: A grievance process the inmate can actually use. If it’s a “dead end,” “opaque,” or actively blocked, it’s unavailable.
Summary Judgment: A court decision without a full trial, appropriate only when there are no genuine disputes about important facts.
Dead End Grievance: A procedure that gives no relief or is impossible to follow, making exhaustion unfairly impossible.
Tolling: Pausing or extending a time limit—here, informal efforts to resolve a complaint stopped the five-day deadline from running.

Conclusion

Edwards v. Destefano reaffirms that exhaustion under the PLRA is not a hollow formality. When a grievance mechanism becomes functionally inaccessible—especially due to an unforeseen transfer—courts must recognize that the remedy is no longer “available.” By applying Romano and the Supreme Court’s tri-part test from Ross, the Second Circuit protects detainees from harsh procedural forfeitures and signals to correctional institutions the importance of clear, uninterrupted grievance pathways. The reversal of summary judgment ensures that Edwards’s substantive claims of excessive force, denial of medical care, and property destruction will be decided on their merits rather than a technicality.