Appeals Court Rules Michigan’s Tolling Provision Is Not Inconsistent with the PLRA
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled on January 29, 2025 that Michigan’s tolling provision codified in Mich. Comp. Laws section 600.5856 is not inconsistent with the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PLRA).
On March 2, 2018, prisoner Lamont Bernard Heard sought to amend a pending 42 U.S.C. section 1983 complaint by adding a First Amendment claim of retaliation related to his transfer to the “Burns Unit” (“Retaliation Claim”) during the previous year. On July 31, 2019, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan dismissed the Retaliation Claim for failure to exhaust his administrative remedies. Heard subsequently exhausted those remedies and refiled the Retaliation Claim on January 19, 2021. Therefore, the elapsed time from the accrual date of the Burns Unit transfer (January 10, 2017) until the date he properly filed the exhausted Retaliation Claim (July 31, 2019) was four years and nine days.
Michigan’s statute of limitations (“SOL”) for personal injury actions—applicable to Heard’s Retaliation Claim—was three years. Ordinarily, Heard’s action would have been untimely. But the tolling provision of section 600.5856 paused the SOL while the unexhausted Retaliation Claim was pending until it was dismissed by the district court on July 31, 2019. Consequently, the tolling provision returned over 16 months to the clock, meaning the Retaliation Claim was timely.
However, the district court determined that the tolling provision conflicted with the “unexpressed purpose” of Congress when it enacted the PLRA. Refusing to apply the provision to Heard’s Retaliation Claim, the district court dismissed it as untimely. Heard appealed.
The Court began with an explanation: “[A]s federal judges, we can’t speculate about the hypothetical purposes of a law. We have to follow the text that Congress enacted. Because the plain text of the PLRA casts no doubt on state tolling provisions, we reverse the judgment below…Congress gave individuals a cause of action to sue state officials for violations of their constitutional rights.”
However, there is no SOL in section 1983. But in 42 U.S.C. section 1988, courts are instructed to borrow from the “common law, as modified and changed by the constitution and statutes of the State” provided that the state’s law “is not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States.” Thus, the federal courts employ state SOLs for section 1983 actions.
When courts “borrow a state’s statute of limitations, [the courts] also borrow any relevant tolling provisions” since “the two go hand-in-hand. ‘In virtually all statutes of limitations the chronological length of the limitation period is interrelated with provisions regarding tolling, revival, and questions of application.’” So federal courts, the Court wrote, should not “unravel state limitations rules unless their full application would defeat the goals of the federal statute at issue.” And since 1830 the U.S. Supreme Court has “held that state statutes of limitations govern[ed] … unless Congress ha[d] specifically provided otherwise.”
When enacting the PLRA, Congress provided that “[n]o action shall be brought … by a prisoner … until such administrative remedies as are available are exhausted.” But the Court rejected the view of the Defendants and the district court, summarized as: “[the provision] can be abused. A prisoner can bring his unexhausted claims to court, have his claims dismissed for failure to exhaust, and then come back to court with his (now-exhausted) claims. Those claims won’t be time-barred under Michigan law because the statute of limitations would’ve been tolled in the meantime. So, the prisoner won’t be penalized for first suing without exhausting. And without that deterrent, the prisoner won’t bother exhausting in the first place.” Accordingly, this would “thwart the PLRA’s goal of reducing burdensome prisoner litigation.”
The Court observed “[f]irst, section 1988 tells us to disregard state law if the state law is inconsistent with the Constitution or federal law, not the policies underlying those laws.… Second, ‘[t]he best evidence of purpose is the statutory text adopted by both Houses of Congress and submitted to the President,’ not our speculations. Third, the [United States] Supreme Court has examined only the consistency of a state tolling rule with the federal policy underlying the cause of action at issue. The [United States Supreme Court] hasn’t extended this policy-assessment test to procedural hurdles like the PLRA.”
That is, since the PLRA does not grant prisoners a cause of action, the policy-assessment test is inapplicable. Furthermore, the PLRA is silent regarding tolling provisions of the States. Had Congress wanted those provisions excluded, it could have so stated.
Finally, tolling did not eliminate the exhaustion requirement. Prisoners, as shown by Heard, were still required to exhaust their claims and prisoners were unlikely to “abuse” the provision since tolling merely delayed resolution of their claims. Accordingly, the Court reversed the district court’s dismissal. See: Heard v. Strange, 127 F.4th 630 (6th Cir. 2025).
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Related legal case
Heard v. Strange
| Year | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Cite | 127 F.4th 630 (6th Cir. 2025) |
| Level | Court of Appeals |