Appellate Case: 23-1343 Document: 51-1 Date Filed: 11/19/2024 Page: 1 FILED United States Court of Appeals PUBLISH Tenth Circuit
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS November 19, 2024 Christopher M. Wolpert FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT Clerk of Court _________________________________
DUSTIN ALAN ROWLAND,
Plaintiff - Appellant, v. Nos. 23-1343 and 23-1411 ANDRE MATEVOUSIAN, Regional Director of the North Central Regional Office of the Federal Bureau of Prisons; WILLIAM TRUE, Warden of FCI Florence; SHARI HIMLIE, Health Service Administrator, FCI Florence; JOHN DOES 1-5 and JANE DOES 1-5; UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Defendants - Appellees. _________________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Colorado (D.C. No. 1:22-CV-00388-DDD-SKC) _________________________________
Emil Lippe, Jr., Law Offices of Lippe & Associates, Dallas, Texas, for Plaintiff- Appellant.
Jaynie Lilley, Attorney, Appellate Staff (Brian M. Boynton, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, and Barbara Herwig, Attorney, Appellate Staff, with her on the brief) United States Department of Justice, Civil Division, Washington, D.C., for Defendants- Appellees. _________________________________
Before TYMKOVICH, SEYMOUR, and EID, Circuit Judges. _________________________________
TYMKOVICH, Circuit Judge. _________________________________ Appellate Case: 23-1343 Document: 51-1 Date Filed: 11/19/2024 Page: 2
Dustin Rowland sued various prison officials, claiming that they violated
federal law for failing to provide adequate medical care for his hernia. He claims
that they were deliberately indifferent to his serious medical need by repeatedly
denying his requests for hernia surgery and post-operative treatment.
The district court dismissed Mr. Rowland’s case, finding that there was no
federal private right of action for his deliberate indifference claim, and that he failed
to exhaust his administrative remedies for his injunctive relief request and his claim
under the Federal Tort Claims Act.
We affirm. The Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized that private rights
of action for constitutional claims are disfavored. Mr. Rowland’s remedies lie with
the procedures provided by the Bureau of Prisons’ Administrative Remedial Program.
I. Background
Mr. Rowland is a federal inmate who developed a hernia after getting into a
fight during pretrial detention. A physician examined Mr. Rowland and concluded
that his hernia was “reducible and stable.” Accordingly, the physician recommended
measures short of a surgery, such as the use of an abdominal binder, and massage
techniques to assuage any discomfort or pain. The physician also issued a pass that
guaranteed Mr. Rowland access to a bottom bunk. But despite the physician’s
recommendations, Mr. Rowland wanted surgery, so he resorted to the Bureau of
Prisons’ (BOP) Administrative Remedial Program to make that request.
The BOP’s Administrative Remedial Program proceeds in four steps. First,
the prisoner must submit a BP-8 form, which is a complaint to the BOP that aims to 2 Appellate Case: 23-1343 Document: 51-1 Date Filed: 11/19/2024 Page: 3
resolve the dispute informally. 28 C.F.R. § 542.13. If that attempt fails, the prisoner
can submit a BP-9 form, which is an appeal to the warden. Id. § 542.14. If the
warden rejects the appeal, the prisoner can submit a BP-10 form, which is an appeal
to the regional director. Id. § 542.15(a). When submitting the BP-10 form, the
prisoner must attach the prior BP-9 denial. Id. § 542.15(b). If the BP-10 form is
denied, the prisoner can submit a BP-11 form, which is an appeal to the general
counsel at the central office. Id. § 542.15(a). When submitting the BP-11 form, the
prisoner must attach the previous BP-9 and BP-10 denial notices. Id. § 542.15(b).
Mr. Rowland first submitted a BP-8, and then a BP-9 form. Both forms were
denied based on the doctor’s recommendation that Mr. Rowland continue treating his
hernia with measures short of surgery. Mr. Rowland did not immediately appeal
those denials.
Months later, however, Mr. Rowland tried again, submitting a new BP-9 form
to request surgery for his hernia. That request was denied. Mr. Rowland then
appealed that decision by filing a BP-10 form, and this time, the BOP approved a
“routine consultation for evaluation by general surgery,” but noted that Mr. Rowland
would “not be notified of the date of that appointment” because of “safety and
security concerns.” App. Vol. IV at 904. Moreover, the health director “defer[red]
diagnostic and treatment interventions to the Health Services staff at the local level.”
Id.
Unsatisfied with that decision, Mr. Rowland appealed by filing a BP-11 form.
This appeal was denied for a procedural reason: Mr. Rowland had failed to attach his
3 Appellate Case: 23-1343 Document: 51-1 Date Filed: 11/19/2024 Page: 4
immediately prior BP-9 denial form. 1 Id. at 907. In the BP-11 denial notice, Mr.
Rowland was instructed to correct this procedural deficiency “within 15 days of the
date of this rejection notice.” Id. The notice was dated November 15, 2021. Id. But
Mr. Rowland received the BP-11 denial notice on December 9, 2021, which was after
the fifteen-day window to cure had passed. Id. Still, he took no steps to cure the
procedural deficiency despite its tardiness. Three months after receiving this denial
notice, Mr. Rowland received surgery for his hernia. App. Vol. II. at 374.
Mr. Rowland filed this lawsuit, arguing that various prison officials violated
the Eighth Amendment by showing deliberate indifference to his serious medical
condition. He seeks damages for this alleged constitutional violation under Bivens v.
Six Unknown Named Agents of Fed. Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), and
requests injunctive relief for proper post-operative care after his hernia surgery. He
also asserts a negligence claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) against the
federal government. Defendants moved to dismiss the Bivens claim and moved for
summary judgment on the injunctive relief and FTCA claims.
The district court dismissed all of Mr. Rowland’s claims. The district court
found that Bivens did not extend to Mr. Rowland’s case, granted summary judgment
on the injunctive relief claim for failure to exhaust his administrative remedies, and
dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction the FTCA claim for failure to
1 Mr. Rowland states he never received his BP-9 denial notice. If that is true, the BP-10 form should have been denied on the same procedural basis as his BP-11 form, since it also presumably lacked the BP-9 denial notice. The record does not explain this anomaly. 4 Appellate Case: 23-1343 Document: 51-1 Date Filed: 11/19/2024 Page: 5
exhaust. As for the injunctive relief claim, the district court found that all of Mr.
Rowland’s BOP submissions concerned his requests for hernia surgery—not for post-
operative care. And even if those submissions for hernia surgery could be construed
broadly to include post-operative care, the district court found that Mr. Rowland’s
claim would still fail because he did not exhaust his remedies at the final level of
review. The district court concluded that, even if Mr. Rowland had not initially
received the BP-9 denial form, which is what he argued at summary judgment, he
should have done something to notify the BOP about this and attempt to retrieve it.
Instead, he did nothing.
After the district court’s judgment became final, Mr. Rowland moved for
reconsideration of his injunctive relief request under Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b), advancing
a different argument entirely as to why he could not cure his BP-11 form and thereby
exhaust his administrative remedies. In that motion, Mr. Rowland argued for the first
time that the district court was mistaken in finding that he had an opportunity to cure
his BP-11 form, since he had actually received the BP-11 denial notice after the
fifteen-day window to cure had passed. Thus, it was impossible or futile for him to
correct the procedural deficiency.
The district court denied the motion because, among other things, Mr.
Rowland could have raised this argument on summary judgment but did not do so.
The fact that he received the BP-11 notice late was not new information, since after
all, the date-stamped BP-11 denial notice was attached to the Defendants’ summary
5 Appellate Case: 23-1343 Document: 51-1 Date Filed: 11/19/2024 Page: 6
judgment motion, and a motion for reconsideration was not a means to raise
arguments that could have been raised previously.
Mr. Rowland appeals the dismissal of all his claims.
II. Discussion
Mr. Rowland contends the district court erred in dismissing his Bivens claim,
granting summary judgment on his injunctive relief for failure to exhaust his
administrative remedies, and dismissing for lack of subject matter jurisdiction the
FTCA claim for failure to exhaust. We conduct a de novo review of a district court’s
determinations on a motion to dismiss and summary judgment. Johnson v. Smith, 104
F.4th 153, 167 (10th Cir. 2024); Yousuf v. Cohlmia, 741 F.3d 31, 37 (10th Cir. 2014).
A. Bivens
Having come on the scene during an “ancien regime” where the Supreme
Court “routinely” implied causes of action, Ziglar v. Abbasi, 582 U.S. 120, 132
(2017), Bivens is now all but dead. See Mohamed v. Jones, 100 F.4th 1214, 1236, 1237
(10th Cir. 2024) (Tymkovich, J., dissenting) (observing that the Supreme Court’s
“abrogative process [of Bivens] has been ‘gradual, but relentless’” such that the “‘right
answer’ to whether to recognize a Bivens cause of action ‘will always be no’”) (citations
omitted). So much so, in fact, that the Supreme Court has not recognized a Bivens
claim since 1980, and it has unambiguously stated that “if we were called to decide
Bivens today, we would decline to discover any implied causes of action in the
Constitution.” Egbert v. Boule, 596 U.S. 482, 502 (2022).
6 Appellate Case: 23-1343 Document: 51-1 Date Filed: 11/19/2024 Page: 7
And this makes sense. A Bivens action “places great stress on the separation
of powers” by allowing the judiciary to intrude upon the exclusive law-making
domain of the legislature. Egbert, 596 U.S. at 498 n.3. After all, “[w]hen a court
recognizes an implied claim for damages”—as is the case for a Bivens claim—it
“create[s] a new cause of action [that] assign[s] new private rights and liabilities—a
power that is in every meaningful sense an act of legislation.” Id. at 503 (Gorsuch,
J., concurring). Therefore, given that it is a “significant step under separation-of-
powers principles for a court . . . to create and enforce a cause of action for
damages,” Ziglar, 582 U.S. at 133, the Supreme Court has scaled back its Bivens
jurisprudence considerably—effectively relegating it to a “relic of the 20th century.”
Logsdon v. United States Marshal Serv., 91 F.4th 1352, 1355 (10th Cir. 2024). And
this message has not gone unnoticed, as we are on record stating that extending
Bivens would be “an action that is impermissible in virtually all circumstances.”
Silva v. United States, 45 F.4th 1134, 1140 (10th Cir. 2022).
Still, Mr. Rowland believes he can thread the needle. So, to answer this
contention, we must embark upon the two-step Bivens inquiry to see if his claims are
cognizable. Accordingly, we must first examine whether Mr. Rowland’s case arises
in a new Bivens context, or in other words, analyze whether his case is
“meaningful[ly]” different from the three cases in which the Court has implied a
7 Appellate Case: 23-1343 Document: 51-1 Date Filed: 11/19/2024 Page: 8
damages action.” Egbert, 596 U.S. at 492. 2 Second, we must consider whether there
are special factors suggesting that the “the Judiciary is at least arguably less equipped
than Congress to ‘weigh the costs and benefits of allowing a damages action to
proceed.’” Id. (quoting Ziglar, 582 U.S. at 136). “If there is even a single ‘reason to
pause before applying Bivens in a new context,’ a court may not recognize a Bivens
remedy.” Id. (citation omitted).
1. Mr. Rowland’s Case Presents a New Bivens Context
None of the three previously recognized Bivens cases—Bivens itself, Davis v.
Passman, 442 U.S. 228 (1979), and Carlson v. Green, 446 U.S. 14 (1980)—is on all-
fours with Mr. Rowland’s case. Mr. Rowland analogizes his case to Carlson, which
was an Eighth Amendment lawsuit against prison officials for deliberate indifference
to a serious medical need. 446 U.S. at 16. Since his case also alleges deliberate
indifference by prison officials in violation of the Eighth Amendment, Mr. Rowland
claims his case breaks no new ground.
But the similarities between Mr. Rowland’s case and Carlson start and end
there. And what is worse for Mr. Rowland, the Supreme Court has stated that “[a]
claim may arise in a new context even if it is based on the same constitutional
provision as a claim in a case in which a damages remedy was previously
recognized.” Hernandez v. Mesa, 589 U.S. 93, 102, (2020) (emphasis added).
2 The Supreme Court has only recognized Bivens claim in three cases: Bivens itself, Davis v. Passman, 442 U.S. 228 (1979), and Carlson v. Green, 446 U.S. 14 (1980). 8 Appellate Case: 23-1343 Document: 51-1 Date Filed: 11/19/2024 Page: 9
Indeed, given the “expressed caution about extending the Bivens remedy,” even
“significant parallels to one of the Court’s previous Bivens cases” may not be enough
to show that a case arises in the same context. Ziglar, 582 U.S. at 147. “Small”
differences can “easily satisf[y]” the “new-context inquiry.” Id. at 149.
Here, Mr. Rowland’s case contains more than “small” differences from
Carlson in terms of “the generality or specificity of the official action.” Ziglar, 582
U.S. at 140. Consider the following allegations in Carlson:
• Prison officials acted against the doctor’s orders by keeping the plaintiff in a medical facility that was known to be “gross[ly] inadequate”
• The prisoner did not receive “competent medical attention for some eight hours after he had an asthmatic attack”
• The prisoner was “[a]dministered contra-indicated drugs which made [the prisoner’s] attack more severe”
• Prison officials attempted to use a respirator known to be inoperative which further impeded the prisoner’s breathing
• The prisoner died as a result
446 U.S. at 16 n.1.
These allegations are significantly different from the ones presented by Mr.
Rowland. For example, the prison officials did not act contrary to the doctor’s
recommendations for treating Mr. Rowland’s hernia; rather, their actions were
consistent with the physician’s conclusion that the hernia should be treated with more
conservative measures short of surgery. Moreover, unlike Carlson, the prison
officials did not (1) give “contra-indicated drugs” to Mr. Rowland, (2) knowingly
keep him in a medical facility that was “grossly inadequate” and contrary to the 9 Appellate Case: 23-1343 Document: 51-1 Date Filed: 11/19/2024 Page: 10
doctor’s orders, or (3) prescribe or use a medical instrument that was “known to be
inoperative.” And critically, Mr. Rowland ultimately did receive surgery for his
hernia.
Mr. Rowland dismisses the significance of these differences, but in doing so,
he misunderstands the Bivens inquiry. These differences do not disprove that the
Defendants were deliberately indifferent to his medical needs. Rather, they show that
his case is materially different from Carlson and therefore presents a new Bivens
context. Indeed, these differences are more than “small” and would require, at bare
minimum, an impermissible “modest extension” of Bivens. Ziglar, 582 U.S. at 147,
149.
Because Mr. Rowland’s claims are materially different from any of the three
cases where a Bivens cause of action was recognized, we conclude Mr. Rowland’s
case arises in a new Bivens context.
2. Special Factors Counsel Against Extending Bivens to Mr. Rowland’s Case
The second step of the Bivens inquiry dooms Mr. Rowland’s case. The court
must ask whether there are alternative remedial schemes in place that address the
plaintiff’s complaints. And here, there is such a scheme: the BOP’s Administrative
Remedial Program. The Administrative Remedial Program provides Mr. Rowland
the “means through which allegedly unconstitutional actions” (in this case,
inadequate medical care) can be “brought to the attention of the BOP and prevented
from recurring.” Silva v. United States, 45 F.4th 1134, 1141 (10th Cir. 2022).
10 Appellate Case: 23-1343 Document: 51-1 Date Filed: 11/19/2024 Page: 11
Indeed, Mr. Rowland availed himself of this process twice. 3 As this court has held,
the “availability of the BOP’s Administrative Remedy Program offers an
independently sufficient ground to foreclose Plaintiff’s Bivens claim.” Id. at 1141.
Accordingly, Mr. Rowland’s Bivens claim fails, since “so long as Congress or the
Executive has created a remedial process that it finds sufficient to secure an adequate
level of deterrence, the courts cannot second-guess that calibration by superimposing
a Bivens remedy.” Egbert v. Boule, 596 U.S. 482, 498 (2022). The existence of
“alternative remedial structures . . . is reason enough to ‘limit the power of the
Judiciary to infer a new Bivens cause of action,’” id. at 493 (citation omitted), and
that reason here, by way of the BOP’s Administrative Remedial Program, forecloses
Mr. Rowland’s claim.
Since Mr. Rowland’s case presents a new Bivens context, and a remedial
scheme already exists to address his complaint, Mr. Rowland’s Bivens claim fails.
3 Mr. Rowland relies on Fields v. Fed. Bureau of Prisons, 109 F.4th 264, 274 (4th Cir. 2024), to argue that the mere existence of an alternative remedial program is insufficient to counsel against extending Bivens. But in Fields, the Fourth Circuit found that the alternative remedial program was not enough because the prison officials “withheld” and “deliberately thwarted” the “administrative remedies that the executive branch ha[d] implemented to redress such violations.” Id. at 272, 274. That is not the case here. Quite the contrary, Mr. Rowland availed himself of the Administrative Remedial Program twice. Little v. Jones, 607 F.3d 1245, 1250 (10th Cir. 2010) and Aquilar-Avellaveda v. Terrell, 478 F.3d 1223, 1224 (10th Cir. 2007) are also inapposite for the same reason. In fact, Aquilar-Avellaveda only mentioned in passing that “prison officials prevented [the plaintiff] from completing the administrative process.” 478 F.3d at 1224. That case was not about whether an alternative remedial scheme forecloses a Bivens claim, but rather whether the plaintiff must plead that he exhausted his administrative remedies in his complaint. Id. at 1225. 11 Appellate Case: 23-1343 Document: 51-1 Date Filed: 11/19/2024 Page: 12
3. Congress Is Better Equipped to Create a Damages Remedy
But to be sure, the most relevant question under Bivens now is “whether there
is any rational reason (even one) to think that Congress is better suited to ‘weigh the
costs and benefits of allowing a damages action to proceed.’” Egbert, 596 U.S. at
496 (citation omitted). And here, Congress will always be better suited to make such
a call because, as the Supreme Court has emphasized, recognizing a Bivens action
improperly merges the “Constitution’s separation of legislative and judicial power.”
Id. at 491. And more importantly, courts are simply ill-suited to “predict the
‘systemwide’ consequences of recognizing a cause of action under Bivens.” Id. at
493 (citation omitted). “That uncertainty alone is a special factor that forecloses
relief.” Id. So, if “the only question is whether a court is ‘better equipped’ than
Congress to weigh the value of a new cause of action, surely the right answer will always
be no.” Id. at 504 (Gorsuch, J., concurring). “At bottom, creating a cause of action is a
legislative endeavor,” and that is what every Bivens action requires courts to do. Id.
at 491.
Mr. Rowland’s case is no exception, and his Bivens claim fails on that
independent basis alone.
B. Injunctive Relief
Next, Mr. Rowland contends the district court erred in denying injunctive
relief. He claims (1) the administrative remedies were made “unavailable” to him,
12 Appellate Case: 23-1343 Document: 51-1 Date Filed: 11/19/2024 Page: 13
and (2) the district court granted summary judgment on the mistaken belief that he
had the opportunity to cure his BP-11 form, when he did not.
But both of these arguments pertain to Mr. Rowland’s request for hernia
surgery, which is not at issue anymore. Rather, his request for injunctive relief only
pertains to post-operative care, and therefore the only relevant question is whether
Mr. Rowland exhausted his administrative remedies for that request before filing
suit. He has not. 4
All his submissions as part of the administrative remedial process concerned
his request for hernia surgery. See App. Vol. II at 425-27, 429-31, 433-34. None
of the BOP submissions mentioned post-operative care or liver cysts, and nor could
they, since his submissions pre-date his surgery. Indeed, his main argument for
why the administrative remedies were “unavailable” to him involves the BOP’s
handling of two documents—the BP-9 and BP-11 denial notices—both of which
concerned his surgery requests, not post-operative care. To the extent Mr. Rowland
may have requested post-operative care through some other, informal means, such
requests are of no significance, since “proper exhaustion of administrative
remedies” is required. Woodford v. Ngo, 548 U.S. 81, 90 (2006) (emphasis added).
4 As noted above, the district court also found that, even if it were to construe Mr. Rowland’s requests for hernia surgery broadly as encompassing a claim for post- operative care, they would still fail because Mr. Rowland failed to exhaust at the final level of review by correcting his BP-11 form. 13 Appellate Case: 23-1343 Document: 51-1 Date Filed: 11/19/2024 Page: 14
In sum, Mr. Rowland’s failure to exhaust his administrative remedies for post-
operative care precludes his claim for injunction relief. 5
C. The District Court Did Not Abuse Its Discretion in Denying the Rule 60(b) Motion
Mr. Rowland next appeals the denial of his motion for reconsideration under
Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b). In that motion, Mr. Rowland argued the district court was
mistaken in finding that he had fifteen days to cure his BP-11 form, when in fact, he
did not. He had received the BP-11 denial notice after the fifteen-day window to
cure had passed, which according to Mr. Rowland, rendered any attempt to exhaust
his administrative remedies, futile. But critically, Mr. Rowland raised this argument
for the first time in his motion for reconsideration in the district court. He did not
raise this argument on summary judgment, even though he could have. Accordingly,
the district court denied the motion for reconsideration.
We review a “district court’s denial of Rule 60(b) relief” for abuse of discretion,
“keeping in mind that Rule 60(b) relief is extraordinary and may only be granted in
exceptional circumstances.” Lebahn v. Owens, 813 F.3d 1300, 1306 (10th Cir.
2016). “We will not reverse the district court’s decision on a Rule 60(b) motion
unless that decision is “arbitrary, capricious, whimsical, or manifestly unreasonable.”
5 Because Mr. Rowland’s failure to exhaust his administrative remedies is fatal to his injunctive relief claim, we do not find that the district court abused its discretion in denying him discovery. See Gutierrez v. Cobos, 841 F.3d 895, 908 (10th Cir. 2016) (“We review the district court’s denial of a Rule 56(d) motion for an abuse of discretion.”). Discovery would have made no difference in resolving his injunctive relief claim.
14 Appellate Case: 23-1343 Document: 51-1 Date Filed: 11/19/2024 Page: 15
Id. (citation omitted). “[A] Rule 60(b) motion is not an appropriate vehicle to
advance new arguments or supporting facts that were available but not raised at the
time of the original argument.” Id.
Putting aside that the district court’s denial of Mr. Rowland’s injunctive relief
request would still stand because he did not exhaust his administrative remedies for
post-operative care, the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying the
motion for reconsideration. To be sure, neither party disputes that Mr. Rowland
received his BP-11 denial notice after the fifteen-day window to cure had passed.
But there is also no dispute that Mr. Rowland could have raised this argument on
summary judgment in the first instance. After all, the dated BP-11 denial notice was
attached to the Defendants’ summary judgment motion. See App. Vol IV at 973. Mr.
Rowland did not do so, and tellingly, he fails to explain—or even address—why. A
Rule 60(b) motion is not meant to “advance arguments that could have been raised in
prior briefing.” Servants of Paraclete v. Does, 204 F.3d 1005, 1012 (10th Cir. 2000).
Therefore, the district court was within its discretion to deny the motion. 6 See
Lebahn v. Owens, 813 F.3d 1300, 1308 (10th Cir. 2016) (holding that the district
court’s denial of the Rule 60(b) motion was not an abuse of discretion because “a
party may not use Rule 60(b) to raise arguments that could have been raised earlier”).
6 Moreover, Mr. Rowland does not address the district court’s point that he did nothing to cure the procedural deficiency—regardless of when he received the denial notice. For instance, Mr. Rowland could have alerted the BOP that he received the BP-11 denial notice late, or that he never received the BP-9 denial form. He did neither of those things. 15 Appellate Case: 23-1343 Document: 51-1 Date Filed: 11/19/2024 Page: 16
D. FTCA
Finally, Mr. Rowland’s FTCA claim fails.
“The FTCA bars claimants from bringing suit in federal court until they have
exhausted their administrative remedies.” Lopez v. United States, 823 F.3d 970, 976
(10th Cir. 2016) (quoting McNeil v. United States, 508 U.S. 106, 113 (1993)). This
requirement is “jurisdictional and cannot be waived.” Lopez, 823 F.3d at 976
(citation omitted). A claimant may not file suit until after he has “first presented the
claim to the appropriate Federal agency,” and that claim has been “finally denied by
the agency in writing and sent by certified or registered mail.” 28 U.S.C. § 2675(a).
Alternatively, a plaintiff may file suit if the agency has failed to make any decision
within six months of the claim’s filing. See 28 U.S.C. § 2675(a).
Here, Mr. Rowland failed to exhaust his administrative remedies before filing
this case. Mr. Rowland initially filed this lawsuit on February 11, 2022, see App.
Vol. I at 8, which was months before he submitted his claim with the BOP on June 2,
2022. See App. Vol IV at 985. Moreover, he filed an amended complaint on August
10, 2022, see App. Vol III. at 790-807, which was before the BOP had acted on his
administrative complaint—and before six months had passed since he originally filed
his claim, which would have otherwise allowed him to file suit regardless of whether
the BOP had acted on his case. See 28 U.S.C. § 2675(a). Because Mr. Rowland
failed to exhaust his administrative remedies, his FTCA claim fails.
Still, Mr. Rowland argues that even if he failed to exhaust his administrative
remedies, his FTCA claim should be abated as opposed to dismissed. But FTCA’s 16 Appellate Case: 23-1343 Document: 51-1 Date Filed: 11/19/2024 Page: 17
exhaustion requirement is a “jurisdictional” matter. Lopez, 823 F.3d at 976; see
Duplan v. Harper, 188 F.3d 1195, 1199 (10th Cir. 1999) (“As a jurisdictional
prerequisite, the FTCA bars claimants from bringing suit in federal court until they
have exhausted their administrative remedies.”) (emphasis added). Accordingly,
dismissal of his FTCA claim was proper.
III. Conclusion
For the reasons stated above, we affirm.