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Committee debate over prison litigation bill centers on exhaustion rule and access to courts
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Summary
Members sparred over House Bill 193, a technical cleanup to the Prison Litigation Reform Act, with opponents warning the bill could bar some incarcerated people from court and backers saying it resolves circuit splits over procedure.
House Bill 193, presented in committee by Representative Amadee, would align Louisiana’s Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) provisions governing administrative exhaustion with related statutes in the Revised Statutes and clarify procedural rules for raising failure-to-exhaust defenses.
Phyllis Glaser, section chief in the litigation division of the Attorney General’s Office, told the committee the bill “remedies a discrepancy” between the PLRA and the Corrections Administrative Remedy Procedure by clarifying when a prisoner’s suit should be dismissed with or without prejudice and how failure-to-exhaust should be raised procedurally. “This bill does, remedy a discrepancy between, the PLRA … and the corrections administrative remedy procedure,” Glaser said.
Opponents cautioned that the bill, and a key amendment adopted in committee, could limit access to courts for incarcerated people. Mary Patricia Ray of the Promise of Justice Initiative said the Louisiana State Law Institute had flagged similar language as a potential constitutional problem and warned the measure would make exhaustion a hard bar in situations where internal grievance procedures are inaccessible. “This bill ignores the principle and removes the discretion from the courts to consider whether the exhaustion was even possible,” Ray said, adding that the change could be consequential for pregnant people and others with time-sensitive medical needs.
The panel considered and adopted amendment set 2501, offered by Senator Seba, which changed a procedural characterization from a dilatory exception to a peremptory exception and moved the code citation to the peremptory-exception provision. Senators and witnesses debated whether that change could foreclose a prisoner’s ability to return to administrative procedures after a court dismisses an early-filed suit. Committee discussion addressed suspension of prescription while administrative remedies are pending and how courts treat premature filings.
After debate and public testimony, the committee voted on a motion to report House Bill 193 with amendments; the motion failed on a committee vote recorded in the transcript as 2 yeas and 4 nays. The committee also previously adopted the procedural amendment in a separate roll call. The committee’s discussion left several substantive questions unresolved — including how courts will treat claims where administrative procedures are delayed — and opponents urged additional review before further action.
