Supreme Court weighs whether Alabama exhaustion rule blocks civil-rights suits under 42 U.S.C. § 1983

The Supreme Court heard oral argument in Williams v. Fitzgerald on whether an Alabama statute that routes certain unemployment‑benefits disputes through administrative channels before state courts is preempted by 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Petitioners’ counsel, identified in the argument as Mr. Unikowsky, told the justices that Patsy and Felder require that exhaustion cannot be used to defeat a § 1983 claim and that the Alabama scheme effectively immunizes the state in some cases.

The petitioners argued that Alabama’s process forces claimants to seek relief from the very official they later sue — an arrangement counsel called “Kafkaesque” because, in the petitioners’ view, the state court concluded claimants could not challenge their inability to exhaust precisely because they had not been able to exhaust. Mr. Unikowsky urged the Court to read Patsy and Felder as foreclosing exhaustion requirements that stand as practical barriers to vindicating federal rights under § 1983.

Respondent counsel, appearing as Mr. Lacour, pushed back. He told the justices that nothing in the text of 42 U.S.C. § 1983…