In 1996, Congress passed the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) with the goal of limiting the number of frivolous federal lawsuits filed by people in custody. One of the PLRA’s key provisions is the exhaustion requirement, which requires people in custody to attempt to resolve their grievances within the prison before federal courts can hear their claims. Legal scholars who write about transgender people in custody often analyze the merits of claims but give little attention to the procedural roadblocks posed by the PLRA and its exhaustion provision. And PLRA scholars have yet to examine the exhaustion provision from a trans-informed lens. Thus, there exists a scholarly gap in two directions.
Drawing on a survey of federal case law and original interviews conducted with legal advocates, this Note argues that the exhaustion provision stands as a nearly insurmountable barrier to trans people’s ability to remedy the challenges they face in custody. Unsurprisingly, the PLRA’s exhaustion requirement burdens trans people in ways it burdens non-trans people. But it also burdens trans people in exacerbated or wholly specific ways. As a result, the exhaustion requirement systematically prevents trans people from resolving their non-frivolous grievances and leaves them vulnerable to continued abuse in prisons.
In addition to its doctrinal contribution, this Note also centers trans people’s experiences in a way that most case law does not. The goal of this Note is to call attention to the specific hardships trans people face while incarcerated and offer small- and large-scale solutions to ensure that they have meaningful access to justice.