Rodosvaldo Pozo v. Gary McCaughtry Randall Gerritson, and David Hautamaki

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge.

This interlocutory appeal, by permission under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b), presents a single question: Whether a prisoner’s neglect to take a timely administrative appeal within the state system means that he has failed to exhaust state remedies for purposes of 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a). The district court, acting through a magistrate judge following consent under 28 U.S.C. § 636(c), answered “no.” The magistrate judge reasoned that a prisoner exhausts his state remedies by taking all steps that the state requires, whether or not the prisoner complies with the state’s rules for form and timeliness of action. We reach the opposite conclusion: unless the prisoner completes the administrative process by following the rules the state has established for that process, exhaustion has not occurred. Any other approach would allow a prisoner to “exhaust” state remedies by spurning them, which would defeat the [*1024] statutory objective of requiring the prisoner to give the prison administration an opportunity to fix the problem — or to reduce the damages and perhaps to shed light on factual disputes that may arise in litigation even if the prison’s solution does not fully satisfy the prisoner. See Porter v. Nussle, 534 U.S. 516, 122 S.Ct. 983, 152 L.Ed.2d 12 (2002);

Booth v. Churner, 532 U.S. 731, 121 S.Ct. 1819, 149 L.Ed.2d 958 (2001).