Prisoners’ Rights and Access to Courts

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal from California prisoners Topaz Johnson and Ian Henderson over whether indigent inmates can split the $350 filing fee for a federal civil‑rights lawsuit, prompting a pointed dissent from Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. The men alleged corrections officers at High Desert State Prison forced them and a third prisoner to stand for nearly nine hours, handcuffed, in filthy 2.5‑by‑2.5‑foot cages that reeked of urine, and sought to sue jointly, but a trial judge and the 9th Circuit required each to pay the full $350. Sotomayor called the lower court’s reading of federal law “likely incorrect,” warned it produces “unfair results” and needless duplicate litigation, and noted that prisoners who want to take such disputes to the Supreme Court must pay another $600, an enormous barrier for people earning cents per hour. Justice Elena Kagan separately indicated she would have granted review but did not join the dissent, leaving the three liberal justices one vote short of the four needed to take the case. The decision leaves in place a fee rule that limits collective suits by poor prisoners under the Prison Litigation Reform Act and, as Sotomayor put it, makes it harder for them even to “knock on this Court’s door.”