denied access to all law library materials for no apparent kena logical purpose on the eve of and during a civil rights trial where he was representing himself press say the supreme court explained and bounds that meaningful access to the courts is the touch lewis over and over again that use language denoting a continuing right of access and christopher discusses backward looking claims which involve the loss or an adequate settlement of america various case this court has consistently and at least forty opinion addressed access claims on the merits an exercise that presumes the right extends past the filing of a complaint and it is pennsylvania g o c is own policy to give and mates access to legal materials throughout the pendency of their cases  their view is instead that there is no right of access to law library materials after a prisoner files a complaint that is an extremely wrongheaded and dangerous position one that would negate not only the right of access to the courts but the underlying constitutional rights that the right of access is meant to protect that cannot be and is not the law this court need only reverse the district court on its legal error that prevented it from addressing this tour of paris claims and three man for further efforts to pursue a legal claim and held that mr a law stated a claim regarding his inability to file a brief in his post conviction appeal the facts of that case are also similar to the facts here mr  he was denied law library access while and mystery of segregation finally i think our law is helpful here because it shows the approach that this court should take in this case and i lov the district court made an error of law that that prevented it from addressing the legal claim on the merits it thought that the supreme court's decision and stand and that there is no access lam when a prisoner is and ministering of segregation let me frank's me that a lot of the briefing in this case focuses on time timing of right of access doesn't apply just kind of create complaint let me korea appeal or does it apply kind of at all points sometimes which is in that seems to be a very very very prominent that there are in this briefing but i guess and that's that's those of course you want but i think one of the thoughts that i had when i read the brief was not to diminish the significance of when but when only becomes important if we have a right in play at all and and recognizing that the  right of access aren't super super clear but just taking for a minute that it exists right and this is very hopeful of the and at least as i read who felt in law school which is rights have corresponding duties and obligation of one person has a right there's a corresponding duty an obligation and so if there is a right to access that means that there has to be a corresponding duty or obligation and if it's a right to access a law that's just not how it works it's on state to the extent that there is a right of access it carries a duty on an individual it's not an affirmative duty it's a naked d duty to avoid denying access to what the state was supposed to provide and so i asked that in this case because it least when we read about the two guards in the library may be a different question is if the only duty on them is a negative not to prevent access that the state should have given then why why why should this case at least those to the guards libra different but at least some of the guards that's off the table right your honor you know we think that the cards had an obligation to furnish mr of arrow with the access that so what the guards are supposed to pay for out of their own money federal rules of evidence and well since nexus no of course not your honor the president had set up th materials to be available to mr of there at the housing unit that he was assigned to had two computers available for library access and the broader institution had a and i'm not sure that the right of access does that to individuals might do that to state but essentially what you're saying is because the two guards were not i t savvy enough to fix two computers and walk them on to lexis nexis there no individual capacity why you bill i know you're not crying not necessarily so two points there on st i will admit to you if this was just a case about the computers it would be a harder case but mr of a or i understood the computers were not working the guard said we would try to get them fixed i'm in advance of trial and he said ok in the meantime could i please have access to the physical box that i know exists in the other parts of this institution and and he was not saying broadly you know send me over there he said there are two pieces of material that i need these are the two fundamental texts that anyone would need on the eve of trial and that's the federal rules of civil procedure in the federal r evidence and they said no and so it's just i think the record says that they said we'll try and then the librarian in so so so might you she was about the guards to your point about someone saying no that that's your is a simple librarian thing but i don't think that the guards themselves said well the rules of evidence are are you know we've got them back in our office and now we say no the answer that they said was there in someone else's possession custody or control not our they don't have possession cluster control over there's no allegation they did and so now to say that they had to go into trial way the federal rules of evidence through some  particular segregated unit at the institution the physical books were at the same facility just in a different part of the facility so i just want to clarify that point and we're not saying that the guards are liable all we're saying here is that mr rivera about whether he met the allegations those these issues have not been addressed at all by anyone because the district court erroneous mr that under any factual circumstances mr barrett just simply did not have a cause of action and that's wrong for  reasons we stated in our brief and so the proper remedy here is to do what the court did in allah which is to fix the district courts erroneous legal determination and remain and for proceedings consistent with this opinion to questions about injury and causation and whether these defendants did have control and let me bracket that and say it and i think it is alleged possibly in the complaint that the two officials did have control over these materials so that but but these these questions are ones that the district court is better able to address in the st instance and i think it would be especially procedurally inappropriate for this court reach out and decide this case on the questions of whether he adequately pled a cause of action here because he has not been allowed an opportunity to amend his case law is quite clear that where a complaint is and you have to keep the other or maybe out of this right district more modest approach would be just to say this was dismissed on a for on or on a screening as i understand it and the one thing we know we could get that in the context of likely an amended complaint because there are issues that probably a client like yours would like to mention and we would it would just kind of be a do over with the understanding this is not a your honor i don't think that would an approach that would work in this case because and i appreciate the idea that our client would be entitled that the complaint is not frivolous and that he would be entitled to  amend but once he does that and the district court is back where it actually and where it needs to address the allegations and a like a amended complaint but the question still remains does he have a cause of action that is triggered by the denial of law library access on the eve of his trial the district court said no there just report determined that as a matter of law he can pursue his claim and and we think that this court needs to thank you your honor may please the court michael's for insight from the pennsylvania office of attorney general from behalf of lieutenant mark owen sargent gilbert mr rivera was not denied access to courts because he filed this complaint for an access to courts claim based on affirmative assistance not active in offense once the complaint has been filed the right access has been on it this is the fundamental mistake my adversary makes by failing to distinguish between a prison official actively interfering with inmates access to courts and the prisons obligation to was persons helping him but for getting that complaint filed was only the st of many important steps and having access to the courts and to say that it's terminated suddenly w me seems to ignore the importance of what this this right to access the courts is supposed to protect i understood your honor and i appreciate the analogy but both the u s supreme court precedent and this court have not extended the right of affirmative access beyond the filing of the complaint prior to bounce the only right to access that had been recognized was to be free from active in a ferentz yes b of that to include a right of affirmative assistance lewis rein that in and it has not gone beyond filing a complaint in fact i know my adversary is focused on several different phrases  libraries altogether and then replace it with some minimal access to legal advice and a system of court provided forums such as those that contained the original complaints and then to significant in many cases hutson and sanded and those forms only had to ask for the facts and not attempt any legal analysis so so so so let me just let me just jump in here it sounds to me i mean there is a little you know strangeness to the law to to the right of vera here wanted to access the rules of federal civil procedure to file a complaint to make sure that he complied with for instance rule eight and gave a short plain statement you would say oh yeah totally great you get the access and he said you know i'd really like to see the rules of evidence to make sure that i i don't you know see any privileged materials or rely too much on hearsay or doing like that before if i walk what i'm hearing you say is yeah yeah right right exists there you have the right of access now if he says you know later i really like those same materials again because i'm about to go to trial but you're saying it's own no no the right right doesn't give you those you had those once i hope you took a good look but but you don't have them now because right access is gone so you know we could in our beneficence maybe extend it to you we don't want to and so you have no rights so your position yes that's our position and it's a constitutional right and it's a limited right and i think this is consistent with the overall structure of the u s constitution the constitution is a charter of negative not positive rights so think of congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion or i think of it it generally is but i don't think you can say it is exclusively that because we have a bunch of cases provide a right to coun court appointed counsel and and we have right of access and so so i think that this this distinction between negative and positive rights is really really really important to me too but but but i don't think that you can distinction between a few positive rights are negative rights are that make sense with the case law because the case law has only recognized a limited affirmative duty as opposed to a broader interference so as reason says we won't let the prisoner have these copies i mean that's what what is what what is the weight of that what is the justification for that is not given shouldn't we be able to go back in and passing someone a book we submit is it will be affirmative assistance now there is a policy he was in what's called the segregated issue where they put at the time in twenty seven thousand there was a policy that  have the same right to access the prisoners in the rest of the prison and therefore if the r h you cannot provide computer monitors that work isn't there some obligation on the that for whatever reason they also had a copy of the federal rules of evidence there but somehow rainwater not on it there was a drip and all of that ink was blur with would would  right and then then the they'll amplifier a little because the phrase that it uses and it's a common theme they say meaningful right is a meaningful access they don't just say access alone they say meaningful access it so to my colleague judge ross point i think what she's saying is you know maybe at some hyper technical version that was accents but no one says that's meaningful of a sandwich theorem sort of question in terms of we've got to layer on top in a layer on bottom and therefore we kind of know what's in them and so one of the things that i think the case law tells us is that maybe you agree to is that you have this access right before a complaint and you also have this access right before an appeal and so if you have an access right before complaining and you have an access right before an appeal that suggests that you have to end points where there is an excess right and that would lead me to the access right extends continuously through those t endpoints not that there's a donut hole in the middle where there's no access right because otherwise we could spend ourselves off and say oh my goodness this prisoner for whatever reason triggered m t l and now they want to do an m t l complaint and they want to do this and multi what's in the middle should be filled in i mean i mean that cuts against you right i haven't seen a supreme court case that has recognized the right of access that on and on the on the filing of a notice of appeal i don't think this court has recognize that either i know my status every lying on forty seven cases between pages twenty three to twenty six but most of those have to do with the act of an affair and and some of them that do have to do with affirmative assistance in those cases this court simply assumed for purposes of argument that there was a right of access and then dismissed it on other grounds namely actual injury and this court doesn't extend constitutional principles constitutional cause of action by silence so i think i have not seen a could have appealed because of appeals at least to documents the so important that i needed to have them entered into evidence and instead of doing that these did with essentially a collateral attack here his right to access was honored if if i could just briefly touch on the qualified immunity your honest there is not a single case that's remotely similar to what we have here i'm not suggesting there has to be something exactly the same but there has to be something factually similar and we have nothing when it meets waited two years waste the friday before on monday at his trial to request access to the corrections officers do all that they can do and it turns out we can maybe help them on monday but as trials starting there's nothing remotely close to that situation and  thought i'd like to point out that my adversary is not particularize but one of the facts in this case my adversary wants the deal and brought obstructions about how far this right extends but for all the reasons we've just said that access right is limited to the filing complaint  you know i wanted to highlight just a couple of the things we had cited to the dissent in lewis for the purpose of showing that both majority and the dissent knew what was at stake in lewis and what they said there was  that that they could not concur in the suggestion that bound should be overruled to the extent required of states choosing to provide a law library a court access to make them available for a prisoner's use in the period between filing a complaint and its final disposition wrote the right to legal assistance is limited to the pleading stages prisoners have a right to litigate claims challenging their sentences or their conditions of confinement to conclusions with quote quote without active an offense in fact in lieu is they actually use the words active in  too so i think the distinction exists in the case for that dichotomy that it's been limited to the final complaint nothing in this court has said that that right extends beyond that the th and th circuits agree with us and i know i've come past my time you honor i'm happy to answer any other questions you have otherwise i can i can rest on my brief thank you very much and i have no further questions to any of the  the federal rules of civil procedure that he didn't have access to and one fossil client is i want to push back on the notion that the computer is just happened to be broken on this weekend when he needed access  the computers were broke and for the entire time he was house in this facility and in fact the record demonstrates that they remained for ok and at least for a month afterwards he grieved he was back at the same facility in august and grieved again about the broke you know when when when an individual might violate someone else's constitutional rights you might have that kind of you know conscience pinning moment where you say oh maybe that was too much force or you know maybe i should have attended to that prisoners serious medical need you know it's hard for me to think that two guards when they went home in were kind of thinking about their day said you know we were in massive constitutional jeopardy because we clearly established requirement to keep simple purpose matters is that these these state actors or individuals acting under color of state law have some understanding that they'd be violating someone's constitutional rights it's so it one level with when they went home or even when they were doing it may guess the question is when they're unable to fix computers you know law library what what is it that tells them that yeah it's really clear you are jeopardizing constitutional rights right here right now your honor as you pointed out earlier bounds talks about the access for a game meaningful and requiring some ability for the folks to access library materials here because of the computers and their inability or unwillingness to provide him with copies of the material in book form or and photocopy form he was denied access to the two fundamental texts he would need to prepare for his trial now your honor we're not saying mr rivera wins this case all all we're saying is that the district court should assess the  on the merits and he should be given an opportunity to a man's i'd like to briefly discuss this active interference point that was raised it is that the distinction is found nowhere and the doctor and the supreme court or  score the bounds talks about meaningful access we just discussed louis's about the reason the opportunity to present claims christopher a speaks probably of official action interfering with a right both in forward do you mean by skeptic i'm sorry in terms of whether whether what the individual's obligations are st with the state's obligations are and when the supreme court articulated the right they spoke of the state having to provide not individuals having to provide now we recognize that the state works through individuals but usually when you impose an affirmative obligation on a government that doesn't also impose the form of opposition on the individual actors in government and so absent indication from the supreme court that the affirm to be obligation also extended to individual actors it's a little hard to see the right of access allows library the facility did provide these materials at least in theory they had these computers and this part of the facility but they weren't working and they had a law library and the other part of the facility but they didn't provide him with the access and so all the the fact that they existed in some state of radical sense that the institution did have them available only helps mr rivera if he is not and if he is provided with these materials and some real tangible sense by the folks who are responsible for giving him the access to those materials and i'm talking here about the to defer to defendants here and  the library and fact in that way you can kind of look at this as more of an active interference type of case if you think that that distinction as relevant which which it just isn't as so so so you are it time for a bottle i have one follow up question for you love for you to answer and then i'll turn it over to my colleagues if they have any questions but i was using this metaphorical kind of sandwich they are doing right where i  seem to have recall reading that there is a right back since before filing an appeal but was that was that my mind playing tricks i mean in a bunch of string sites or does that does that exist what about what about appeal specifically because for some reason that's the outer layer that seems to complete the picture of the most for me and i'm speaking only for me i'm not speaking on behalf of the panel or else like this but but but if that outer layer and case and so now seventeen is another law library access case and you'll find i'm sorry for not sixteen also is about pursuing appeals those well so and there are cases really throughout the spectrum of litigation from this court and including a number of that are right specifically in the law library access context and i'll just say just one final note many of them are on published i will fully admit that i think that's because