Incarcerated inmate Donald W. Rager (Rager) was physically assaulted by Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) Lt. Keith Buford on July 13, 2010. Rager filed multiple grievances alleging violations of his rights by 13 BOP employees and spent three years exhausting those grievances. The exhaustion process took between 322 days and 901 days to reach final disposition, and four of the grievances were never answered. On February 24, 2015 Rager filed a civil rights lawsuit against the 13 BOP employees alleging multiple violations of his constitutional rights under 42 USC §1983/Bivens.

The District Court for the Northern District of Florida dismissed most of the claims brought by Rager as beyond the statute of limitation (SOL) without considering or applying tolling for exhaustion of administrative remedies (AR 's) as required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 42 USC §1997e(a): "No action shall be brought with respect to prison conditions under Section 1983 of this title, or any other federal law, by a prisoner confined in any jail, prison, or other correctional facility until such administrative remedies as are available are exhausted. " Rager specifically argued that tolling applies to exhaustion of AR's and cited the following rulings:

Gonzalez v. Hasty 651 F 3d 318 (2nd 111
Pearson v. Secy Dept of Corr 775 F 3d 598, 602-04 (3rd 15)
Harris v. Hermann 198 F 3d 158 (5th 99)
Brown v. Morgan 209 F 3d 595, 596 (6th 00)
Johnson v. Rivera 272 F 3d 519, 522 (7th 01)
Williams v. Pulaski Co. Pet Ctr 278 Fed Appx 695 (8th 08)
Brown v. Valoff 422 F 3d 926, 943 (9th 05)

Roberts v. Barreras 484 F 3d 1236 (10th 07)

These eight cases ruled that tolling applies to the time that a prisoner spends exhausting AR's under the PLRA. Rager also cited cases from the 11th Circuit which alluded that "the SOL may have been tolled on account of Leal 's exhaustion of AR's." Leal v. Georgia 254 F 3d 1276 (11th 01); "We proffer, but do not hold, as that issue is not before us, that such a result may be mitigated by the doctrine of equitable tolling, as other Circuits have applied that doctrine to the administrative exhaustion requirement for prison conditions suits under 42 USC §1997e(a). " Napier v. Preslicka 314 F 3d 528 n.3 (11th 02).

Upon appeal to the 11th Circuit, Rager again specifically argued for tolling for exhaustion of AR's in PLRA suits but the 11th Circuit Panel merely stated: "We have expressly declined to address the question of whether the SOL can be tolled while a prisoner is in the process of exhausting his administrative remedies as a mandatory prerequisite for filing a federal lawsuit. " Raeer v. Augustine 2019 US

Whether the statute of limitations should be tolled for the time spent exhausting administrative remedies under the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 42 USC §1997e(a)