Exhaustion of Remedies

• Author: Theodore Eisenberg
• Pages: 955-956

Page 955

Exhaustion-of-remedies questions arise in at least two areas of constitutional adjudication. Since Ex parte Royall (1886), state prisoners have been required to exhaust available, effective state court remedies before seeking federal HABEAS CORPUS relief from allegedly unconstitutional state convictions. Congress codified this result more than half a century later. The exhaustion requirement, which is not constitutionally mandated, is said to reflect the Court's sensitivity to relations between federal and state courts; a federal court is prevented from reviewing a state conviction until state courts have had a chance to correct constitutional errors.

In another class of cases seeking to vindicate constitutional rights, the Supreme Court does not require exhaustion of state judicial remedies. In MONROE V. PAPE (1961) and a series of later cases, the Court has stated that there is no requirement of exhaustion of state judicial remedies before bringing an action against state officials under SECTION 1983, TITLE 42, UNITED STATES CODE. Patsy v. Board of Regents (1982) held that litigants bringing section 1983 cases also need not exhaust state administrative remedies and thereby resolved a long-standing conflict among the courts of appeal. In the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act (1980), Congress imposed an exhaustion-of-administrative-remedies requirement upon certain prisoners bringing actions under section 1983.,

The exhaustion requirement in habeas corpus cases, and its absence in section 1983 cases, generates difficulty in deciding whether to require exhaustion in constitutional actions brought by prisoners, many of which may be brought either as habeas actions or as section 1983 cases. In Preiser v. Rodriguez (1973) the Court held that exhaustion was required in a case close to "the core of habeas corpus," that is, one attacking the validity of a prisoner's conviction or otherwise challenging the fact or duration of confinement. When the prisoner challenges the conditions of confinement, the Court said, the nonexhaustion rule applicable to section 1983 cases governs. Perhaps inspired in part by the long-standing exhaustion requirement in habeas corpus cases, much modern CIVIL RIGHTS legislation reflects sensitivity to state prerogatives by requiring complainants initially to present claims to state authorities. Title VII of the CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964 requires resort to state...