Supreme Court considers limits on prisoners' lawsuits
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court turned its attention Wednesday to the people who file more than 75% of the court's petitions — federal prisoners. And Chief Justice John Roberts was their biggest defender.
The issue: What did Congress mean a generation ago when it required prisoners challenging prison conditions and treatment in court to pay hefty filing fees, in monthly installments, from their meager prison wages? The fees start at $400 in district court, rising to $505 on appeal. Wages range from 23 cents to $1.15 an hour.
The law said prisoners must pay an initial portion of the cost, then contribute 20% of their monthly income until the tab is paid. What it did not make clear was whether that's 20% per prisoner or per case — an amount that could reach 100% after five cases.
Antoine Bruce, who's serving a 15-year sentence for armed kidnapping and assault, is by any standard a frequent filer. His lawyer, Anthony Shelley, told the justices that Congress did not mean to suppress Bruce's 19 lawsuits and appeals — just that he must kick in 20% of his income, one case at a time. But the Justice Department said each case produces another 20% threshold, which could leave Bruce with just $10 in his prison account.
That didn't sit well with Roberts, a conservative jurist not usually sympathetic to convicted criminals. While even the court's more liberal justices seemed to be on assistant solicitor general Nicole Saharsky's side, Roberts accused the government of "extreme harshness."
"The money is used for what — phone calls to family and friends, stamps for letters, and to buy books," Roberts noted. "And you're going to take the last, you know, whatever so that someone who's in there for 20 years can't even buy a book?"
The court's four liberal justices seemed convinced that the 20%-of-income payments must be made for each case, threatening to wipe out all but $10 of frequent filers' incomes. That, they said, was the point of the law Congress passed in 1995.
"Realistically, those later fees are never going to be paid," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, because prisoners with multiple lawsuits and appeals are likely to be released long before they are paid up.
"I thought the government's position was you can't get blood out of a stone."
On the conservative side, Justice Antonin Scalia also seemed unsympathetic to prisoners' plight. Running out of money, he said, "is their own fault if they keep filing baseless suits."
Congress flung open the courthouse doors to impoverished prisoners in 1892, only to partially close them a century later. By then, district courts were flooded with prisoners' complaints. Last year, more than 32,000 lawsuits were filed in federal courts from inside prison walls — 11% of all civil cases.
More than 6,200 so-called in forma pauperis cases were on the Supreme Court's docket in June — 77% of the total. A mere eight made it to oral arguments, but six of them won, including an Arkansas prisoner who sued to keep his beard for religious reasons and a Florida fisherman convicted under a white-collar, evidence-shredding statute for tossing undersized fish overboard.
The difference between the per-prisoner and per-case approach is critical. If two federal appeals courts are correct, a prisoner's costs would be capped at 20% of his or her monthly income no matter how many cases are filed, and he would pay them concurrently.
But five others appeals courts, including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that denied Bruce's appeal, have said each case requires another 20%, to be paid simultaneously. The ruling against Bruce was written by Judge Sri Srinivasan, an appointee of President Obama.
Both sides in Wednesday's argument said their positions wouldn't lead to extreme situations. The government noted that even if five cases exhaust a prisoner's funds, the Bureau of Prisons leaves $10 in his account, and petitions with clear merit are accepted free of charge.
Bruce's lawyer noted that Congress successfully cut back on frivolous lawsuits with a separate "three strikes" rule blocking additional filings after three are dismissed as frivolous. The Supreme Court reinforced that provision in May, ruling that the third strike applies even if the case is being appealed.
Follow @richardjwolf on Twitter