740
Opinion of the Court
exhaustion requirement for Bivens actions. See Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U. S. 388 (1971). It proposed § 1997e(a) as a model, on the assumption that the provision required exhaustion by those seeking nothing but money damages even when money was unavailable at the administrative level. We understood the effect of § 1997e(a) to be quite different, however. See 503 U. S., at 149-151. In holding that exhaustion was not required, we reasoned in part from the language of § 1997e(a) that required an "effective" administrative remedy as a precondition to exhaustion. Id., at 150. When a prisoner sought only money damages, we indicated, only a procedure able to provide money damages would be "effective" within the meaning of the statute. Ibid. ("[I]n contrast to the absence of any provision for the award of money damages under the Bureau's general grievance procedure, the statute conditions exhaustion on the existence of 'effective administrative remedies' "); see also id., at 156 (Rehnquist, C. J., joined by Scalia and Thomas, JJ., concurring in judgment) ("[I]n cases . . . where prisoners seek monetary relief, the Bureau's administrative remedy furnishes no effective remedy").
When Congress replaced the text of the statute as construed in McCarthy with the exhaustion requirement at issue today, it presumably understood that under McCarthy the term "effective" in the former § 1997e(a) eliminated the possibility of requiring exhaustion of administrative remedies when an inmate sought only monetary relief and the administrative process offered none. It has to be significant that Congress removed the very term we had previously emphasized in reaching the result Booth now seeks, and the fair inference to be drawn is that Congress meant to preclude the McCarthy result.5 Congress's imposition
5 This inference is, to say the least, also consistent with Congress's elimination of the requirement that administrative procedures must satisfy certain "minimum acceptable standards" of fairness and effectiveness before inmates can be required to exhaust them, and the elimination of
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