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Nature of Suit Code: 550
Nature of Suit: Prisoner - Civil Rights (U.S. defendant)
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued October 5, 2009 Decided November 20, 2009 

No. 05-5420 

RONALD MITCHELL, 

APPELLANT

v. 

FEDERAL BUREAU OF PRISONS, 

APPELLEE

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 05cv00512) 

Sara Kaiser, Student Counsel, argued the cause as 

amicus curiae in support of appellant. With her on the briefs 

were Steven H. Goldblatt, appointed by the court, Cecily 

Baskir and Charlotte Garden, Supervisory Attorneys, and 

James E. Burke, Tony Diab and Prashina Gagoomal, Student 

Counsel. 

Ronald Mitchell, pro se, filed briefs. 

Harry B. Roback, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the 

cause for appellee. With him on the brief was R. Craig 

Lawrence, Assistant U.S. Attorney. 

USCA Case #05-5420 Document #1216734 Filed: 11/20/2009 Page 1 of 11
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Before: TATEL and BROWN, Circuit Judges, and 

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge. 

 Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge TATEL. 

TATEL, Circuit Judge: Challenging the conditions of his 

incarceration, and having been denied in forma pauperis (IFP) 

status by the district court, appellant now seeks to proceed 

IFP on appeal. Although appellant has only two “strikes” and 

thus faces no Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) bar to IFP 

status, we find that he qualifies as an abusive filer under 

Butler v. Department of Justice, 492 F.3d 440 (D.C. Cir. 

2007), in which we denied IFP status to a prisoner who, 

though not technicaly barred by the PLRA, had nonetheless 

abused the privilege. Also, even though we now recognize an 

exception under Butler for prisoners who face imminent 

danger of serious physical injury, appellant’s allegations are 

insufficient to qualify for that exception. We therefore deny 

his motion for IFP status on appeal. 

I. 

Ronald Mitchell is a twice-convicted bank robber 

currently serving a fifteen-year sentence in the custody of the 

Bureau of Prisons (BOP). Over the course of his tenure in the 

prison system, he has been incarcerated in several different 

penitentiaries and has filed at least sixty-five unsuccessful 

lawsuits and appeals in the federal courts, virtually all of 

which challenged the legality of his conviction and the 

conditions of his confinement. This is one of those cases. 

Proceeding under the Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552a, 

Mitchell filed a complaint in federal court in March 2005, 

alleging that his prison files omitted a required notation 

regarding his need for protective custody. He claimed that 

because of this omission, he was improperly transferred to 

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USP Florence, a high-security prison in Colorado—his first 

stay at a high-security facility. According to Mitchell, even 

though BOP knew he had testified for the government against 

his co-defendants and that USP Florence is “known for 

murders and assaults on . . . anyone who has been known as a 

snitch,” it transferred him there so that he would be 

“murdered” by fellow prisoners. Compl. 3–4. In his request 

for relief, Mitchell also asserted that he “need[s] medical 

treatment for Hepatitis B & C which is incurable and 

administered to plaintiff at USP Florence.” Compl. 8. He 

sought transfer to protective custody, medical treatment, and 

damages. 

Mitchell filed a motion to proceed IFP in the district 

court. The district court, finding that Mitchell had three 

“strikes” within the meaning of the PLRA, 28 U.S.C. § 

1915(g), denied the motion and later dismissed the complaint 

for failure to pay the filing fee. 

Challenging the district court’s denial of IFP status, 

Mitchell now seeks to proceed IFP on appeal. His appellate 

IFP motion has a long history in this court that we need not 

recount here. Suffice it to say that in January 2009, we 

appointed the Georgetown University Law Center Appellate 

Litigation Clinic as amicus curiae to support Mitchell’s 

position. 

II. 

The PLRA prohibits a prisoner who has accumulated 

three or more “strikes” from proceeding IFP in any civil 

action or appeal in federal court. 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g). A 

strike is a civil “action or appeal [brought] in a court of the 

United States” by the prisoner while incarcerated “that was 

dismissed on the grounds that it is frivolous, malicious, or 

fails to state a claim upon which relief may be granted.” Id. 

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Amicus argues that Mitchell has only two strikes. BOP 

contends he has at least three. 

Having thoroughly reviewed Mitchell’s litigation history, 

we agree with amicus. Mitchell has two strikes, both 

complaints dismissed for failure to state a claim. See Mitchell 

v. Dep’t of Justice, No. 1:06-cv-107 (N.D. W. Va. Nov. 11, 

2006); Mitchell v. Hawk-Sawyer, No. 6:01-cv-3324 (W.D. 

Mo. July 19, 2001). None of the other sixty-three cases 

qualifies as a strike. They were either (1) dismissed or 

disposed of, at least in part, for reasons other than being 

“frivolous, malicious, or fail[ing] to state a claim upon which 

relief may be granted,” see Thompson v. Drug Enforcement 

Admin., 492 F.3d 428, 437 (D.C. Cir. 2007) (holding that the 

only cases that count as strikes are those identified in the 

statute), (2) habeas petitions, see Blair-Bey v. Quick, 151 F.3d 

1036, 1039 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (holding that habeas cases are 

not strikes), or (3) appellate affirmances of district court 

dismissals rather than dismissals of appeals, see Thompson, 

492 F.3d at 436 (holding that the PLRA “speaks only of 

dismissals, not affirmances”). Accordingly, the PLRA does 

not prohibit Mitchell from proceeding IFP. 

This, however, does not end our analysis. The 

government argues that we should nonetheless deny Mitchell 

IFP status as a discretionary matter under Butler, where we 

held that courts have authority to deny IFP status to prisoners 

who abuse the privilege but who are not technically barred by 

the PLRA. 492 F.3d at 445. 

We believe the best solution to [the problem of 

abusive filers] lies in exercising our 

discretionary authority to deny IFP status to 

prisoners who have abused the privilege. Our 

ability to do so derives from both the PLRA 

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itself, and our more general supervisory 

authority to manage our docket so as to 

promote[] the interests of justice. 

Id. at 444–45 (alteration in original) (internal quotation marks 

and citation omitted). According to the government, the 

“number, frequency, content, and disposition” of Mitchell’s 

sixty-five federal cases “reflect an unmistakable pattern of 

abuse.” Appellee’s Br. 24. 

Amicus argues that in determining whether to invoke 

Butler we should consider only some of these sixty-five cases. 

Specifically, insisting that the Butler rule is designed to 

prevent abuse of this court’s processes, amicus asks that we 

look only to the three cases Mitchell has filed in the D.C. 

Circuit. We disagree. In Butler itself we considered cases the 

prisoner had filed not just in this court, but also in our district 

court and in the District Court of Maryland. 492 F.3d at 

446–47 & n.8 & 9; see also Hurt v. Soc. Sec. Admin., 544 

F.3d 308, 309 (D.C. Cir. 2008) (referring to cases filed in the 

district courts as part of the evidence of Hurt’s litigation 

history). Even in In re Sindram, 498 U.S. 177 (1991), on 

which amicus relies, the Supreme Court denied IFP status in 

part because the petitioner had raised the same issue “in five 

different state and federal courts on 27 prior occasions.” Id.

at 179. Moreover, the PLRA itself directs courts to consider 

cases filed “in a court of the United States,” 28 U.S.C. § 

1915(g), and we see no reason to consider a smaller set of 

cases when exercising our Butler discretion. The point is this: 

we deny IFP status to prisoners who have abused the 

privilege, and it would make no sense to disregard evidence 

that a prisoner who has yet to abuse the privilege here has 

blatantly abused it elsewhere. 

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Offering a second reason for considering fewer than all 

sixty-five cases, amicus points out that during the proceedings 

leading up to this appeal, the government had identified only 

twelve cases, but that in its appellate brief it listed a total of 

sixty-three (not including the district court or appellate stages 

of the instant case). According to amicus, because the 

government had “multiple opportunities to identify the cases 

on which it wishes to rely,” we should limit our evaluation of 

Mitchell’s IFP eligibility to the twelve previously identified 

cases. Amicus Curiae Reply Br. 6. Again, we disagree. 

Evaluating a prisoner’s entitlement to IFP status is not a 

traditional adversarial proceeding where we serve as an 

“arbiter[] of legal questions presented and argued by the 

parties” and decline to consider arguments raised too late in 

order to prevent unfairness. McBride v. Merrell Dow & 

Pharma., Inc., 800 F.2d 1208, 1211 (D.C. Cir. 1986) (internal 

quotation marks omitted). Rather, Butler calls on us to 

exercise our discretion to protect the federal courts from 

abusive filers, and proper exercise of that discretion requires 

that we act on the basis of as much information as we can 

obtain. Indeed, amicus could hardly object if we had 

uncovered the additional cases ourselves, as often happens in 

IFP proceedings. 

At oral argument, amicus conceded that if we consider all 

sixty-five cases, Mitchell qualifies under Butler as an abusive 

filer. This time we agree. In determining whether to exercise 

our Butler discretion, we consider the “number, content, 

frequency, and disposition of the petitioner’s previous 

filings.” Butler, 492 F.3d at 445. Mitchell has filed sixty-five 

cases over fifteen years. All sought the same relief, and all 

were unsuccessful. Mitchell’s record is comparable to those 

of others whose IFP status we have denied. See, e.g., Hurt, 

544 F.3d at 309 (identifying “more than seventy appeals” in 

two years, all unsuccessful and many frivolous, such as one 

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against the Declaration of Independence). Indeed, Mitchell’s 

record—sixty-five cases over fifteen years—is even worse 

than Butler’s, who in eight years had filed twenty-five 

unsuccessful cases raising the same legal issue. Butler, 492 

F.3d at 446. 

Again, however, this does not end our task. Amicus 

urges us to recognize an exception under Butler for prisoners 

facing an imminent danger of serious physical injury and to 

find that Mitchell qualifies for it. The government has no 

objection to such an exception, but insists that Mitchell fails 

to make the cut. 

For several reasons, we agree with the parties that we 

should recognize an endangerment exception under Butler. 

For one thing, it would comport with the considered policy 

judgment of Congress as expressed in the PLRA, which 

contains an exception to the three-strikes rule for prisoners 

who face “imminent danger of serious physical injury.” 28 

U.S.C. § 1915(g). As the Supreme Court has instructed, 

absent countervailing arguments, “courts can, and indeed 

should, be guided by the federal policies reflected in 

congressional enactments.” Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477, 

488 n.9 (1994). Adopting an endangerment exception to 

Butler that mirrors the PLRA’s also creates a uniform IFP 

policy in this circuit, and the Supreme Court has recently 

emphasized the value of such uniformity. Kansas v. 

Colorado, 129 S. Ct. 1294, 1298 (2009) (crafting a 

discretionary rule by mirroring a statutory rule applicable in 

similar cases because “the best approach is to have a uniform 

rule that applies in all federal cases”). Finally, although IFP 

status may be constitutionally denied to prisoners who have 

abused the privilege, see Tucker v. Branker, 142 F.3d 1294, 

1299 (D.C. Cir. 1998), recognizing an imminent danger 

exception eases any constitutional tension that might result 

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from denying access to the courts to prisoners facing lifethreatening conditions. 

This, then, brings us to the final question: Does Mitchell 

qualify under the imminent danger exception? As with the 

PLRA, we assess the alleged danger at the time Mitchell filed 

his complaint and thus look only to the documents attesting to 

the facts at that time, namely his complaint and the 

accompanying motion for IFP status. See Ibrahim v. District 

of Columbia, 463 F.3d 3, 6 (D.C. Cir. 2006) (“In determining 

whether [the petitioner] qualifies [for the imminent danger 

exception], we look to the complaint . . . .”). We construe his 

complaint liberally and accept its allegations as true. Id. In 

so doing, we reject the government’s argument that we should 

instead subject Mitchell’s allegations to the pleading standard 

the Supreme Court set forth earlier this year in Ashcroft v. 

Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. 1937 (2009). There, the Court held that “a 

complaint must contain sufficient factual matter,” alleged in 

non-conclusory terms, “to state a claim to relief that is 

plausible on its face.” Id. at 1949 (internal quotation marks 

omitted). This standard, however, has no applicability to IFP 

proceedings where we are exercising our discretion to grant or 

withold a privilege made available by the courts. See supra at 

6. IFP proceedings are nonadversarial and implicate none of 

the discovery concerns lying at the heart of Iqbal. See 129 S. 

Ct. at 1950 (“Rule 8 marks a notable and generous departure 

from the hyper-technical, code-pleading regime of a prior era, 

but it does not unlock the doors of discovery for a plaintiff 

armed with nothing more than conclusions.”). Of course, if 

IFP status is granted, defendants remain free to rely on Iqbal

in support of a motion to dismiss the underlying complaint. 

But when considering IFP eligibility, we shall continue using 

the traditional standards applicable to pleadings by pro se 

prisoners. 

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Amicus contends that Mitchell’s complaint and IFP 

motion present two types of imminent danger. First, Mitchell 

alleged that even though BOP knew he had testified for the 

government, it illegally transferred him to USP Florence, a 

prison known for “murders and assaults on 

. . . anyone who has been known as a snitch,” and where he 

was nearly murdered in October 2003. Compl. 3. Although 

we disagree with the government that these allegations are 

insufficiently specific, we do agree that Mitchell has failed to 

allege that the danger he faces is imminent. Not only did 

Mitchell wait until seventeen months after the alleged attack 

to file his complaint, but neither the complaint nor his IFP 

motion alleges any ongoing threat. Cf. Ashley v. Dilworth, 

147 F.3d 715, 717 (8th Cir. 1998) (finding imminent danger 

where the inmate alleged that prison officials knowingly 

placed him near those who are likely to attack him because 

the complaint alleged an ongoing pattern of such placements 

and was filed “very shortly after the last attack”). 

Mitchell’s second imminent danger claim rests on his 

allegations regarding untreated hepatitis. Specifically, he 

alleged that he “need[s] medical treatment for Hepatitis B & 

C which is incurable and administered to plaintiff at USP 

Florence.” Compl. 8. In his IFP motion, he claimed that he 

faces imminent danger because he “needs medical treatment 

for critical impairments.” Mot. for IFP 2. According to the 

government, these allegations fall short because (1) they have 

no connection to his Privacy Act claim, see Pettus v. 

Morgenthau, 554 F.3d 293, 296 (2d Cir. 2009) (denying the 

prisoner’s IFP motion because the complaint “does not seek 

any relief specifically related to the abusive conditions” of 

which he complained), and (2) they are insufficiently specific 

to establish an imminent danger to health. We have no need 

to address the government’s first point because we agree with 

its second. 

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Although we have held that “failure to provide adequate 

treatment for Hepatitis C, a chronic and potentially fatal 

disease, constitutes ‘imminent danger,’” see Ibrahim, 463 

F.3d at 6–7, the prisoner’s factual allegations must be 

sufficiently specific for us to infer that the prisoner has a 

serious disease and that prison officials have failed to treat it. 

Absent such allegations, we have no basis for evaluating the 

imminence or dangerousness of the threat the prisoner faces. 

Moreover, unless we require prisoners to demonstrate the 

actual existence of an imminent threat, otherwise disqualified 

filers could obtain IFP status simply by adding general 

allegations of endangerment. As the Third Circuit, sitting en 

banc, explained in the context of the PLRA’s endangerment 

exception, “any time that an otherwise disqualified prisoner 

alleges that any threat of physical injury occurred at any time, 

that prisoner [would] automatically qualif[y] for the imminent 

danger exception. [This] interpretation of the . . . exception 

thereby swallows the rule. . . . [W]e refuse to conclude that 

with one hand Congress intended to enact a statutory rule . . . 

but, with the other hand, it engrafted an open-ended exception 

that would eviscerate the rule.” Abdul-Akbar v. McKelvie, 

239 F.3d 307, 315 (3d Cir. 2001) (en banc). 

The government points to several cases where the 

allegations were sufficiently specific to qualify for the 

endangerment exception. In Ibrahim, we found an imminent 

danger where the prisoner described in detail the denial of 

particular medical treatment by named persons on specific 

dates. Complaint for Damages at 2–18, Ibrahim, 463 F.3d 3. 

Similarly, the Ninth Circuit found imminent danger where the 

complaint “recounted in detail” the threat posed by the 

prison’s policy of failing to screen inmates for communicable 

diseases. Andrews v. Cervantes, 493 F.3d 1047, 1050 (9th 

Cir. 2007). And the Eleventh Circuit found imminent danger 

where the prisoner sued the facility’s medical officials and 

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described treatment that a doctor had prescribed but that 

prison officials denied. Complaint Under the Civil Rights Act 

at 1, 6–7, Brown v. Johnson, 387 F.3d 1344 (11th Cir. 2004). 

By contrast, Mitchell’s allegations are vague and 

unspecific. He says he “need[s] medical treatment,” but he 

never tells us when he asked for assistance, what kind of 

treatment he requested, who he asked, or who denied it. 

Indeed, he never even clearly states that medical attention was 

actually denied. Had Mitchell alleged any of these facts, we 

might treat his motion differently. Absent such allegations, 

however, and even viewing his complaint through the 

forgiving lens applicable to pro se pleadings, we simply 

cannot determine whether Mitchell faces an imminent danger. 

Given this, and given the need to ensure that the 

endangerment “exception [does not] swallow the rule,” we 

conclude that Mitchell’s allegations are insufficient. 

III. 

For the foregoing reasons, we deny the motion for IFP 

status on appeal. If Mitchell wishes to proceed, he has thirty 

days from the date of this opinion to pay the filing fee. 

So ordered. 

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