Joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented Monday from the Supreme Court’s refusal to take up an appeal over filing fees for lawsuits from indigent prisoners.
“This case asks whether federal law prohibits the poorest prisoners from splitting the $350 fee required to file a federal lawsuit when it allows everyone else to do so,” Sotomayor wrote, adding that federal law didn’t seem to require that rule. She argued that the justices should have taken up the petition from Topaz Johnson and Ian Henderson, who were incarcerated at High Desert State Prison in California.
Sotomayor’s dissent recounted that Johnson and Henderson alleged “that corrections officers forced them and a third prisoner to stand in filthy cages that reeked of urine and measured 2.5 feet by 2.5 feet. They alleged that the officers forced them to stand in those cages for nearly nine hours with their hands cuffed behind their backs.”
The prisoners sought to sue along with a third prisoner to allege that their treatment was unconstitutional. A federal judge ordered them to file three separate lawsuits and each pay the $350 to proceed. The federal appeals court covering California said they could proceed in one suit but that each of them still needed to pay the $350.
Calling that lower court ruling “likely incorrect,” Sotomayor wrote that its logic “produces unfair results” and could lead to duplicative litigation if there’s no incentive to jointly file suits.
Noting that prisoners who wish to appeal the initial filing fee must pay an additional $600, the Obama appointee said all that money “makes it even harder for prisoners earning cents on the hour to obtain justice.” Joined by Jackson, a Biden appointee, Sotomayor expressed hope “that the next time indigent prisoners facing this issue raise nearly $1,000 each just for the opportunity to knock on this Court’s door, my colleagues will choose to open it.”
There’s reason to doubt that they will. It takes four votes to grant review of a petition.
To be sure, Monday’s denial also noted that Justice Elena Kagan would have granted review of the petition, though she didn’t join Sotomayor’s dissent. Even that lukewarm endorsement from the court’s third Democratic-appointed justice falls short of the votes needed on the court with six Republican appointees.
Monday’s two-justice dissent (three if you count Kagan) follows Jackson’s solo dissent from the court’s refusal to take up another petition in January, which led her to lament her colleagues’ refusal to permit poor prisoners’ appeals.
