PUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 12-8148

JAMEY LAMONT WILKINS,

Plaintiff - Appellant,

v.

OFFICER GADDY,

Defendant – Appellee,

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Intervenor.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western 

District of North Carolina, at Charlotte. Robert J. Conrad, 

Jr., Chief District Judge. (3:08-cv-00138-RJC-DSC)

Argued: September 18, 2013 Decided: November 1, 2013

Before WILKINSON, MOTZ, and FLOYD, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Wilkinson wrote the 

opinion, in which Judge Motz and Judge Floyd joined.

ARGUED: David Alexander Strauss, NORTH CAROLINA PRISONER LEGAL 

SERVICES, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellant. Kimberly D. 

Grande, NORTH CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Raleigh, North 

Carolina, for Appellee. Jonathan Heuer Levy, UNITED STATES 

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Intervenor. ON 

BRIEF: Roy Cooper, North Carolina Attorney General, NORTH 

CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Raleigh, North Carolina, for 
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Appellee. Anne Tompkins, United States Attorney, Charlotte, 

North Carolina, Stuart F. Delery, Principal Deputy Assistant 

Attorney General, Barbara L. Herwig, Civil Division, UNITED 

STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Intervenor.
3

WILKINSON, Circuit Judge:

Plaintiff is a state prisoner who challenges the 

constitutionality of 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(d)(2), a part of the 

Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PLRA), as violating his 

right to equal protection of the laws under the Fifth 

Amendment’s Due Process Clause. The challenged provision caps 

the attorneys’ fee award that a successful prisoner litigant may 

recover from the government in a civil rights action at 150 

percent of the value of the prisoner’s monetary judgment. The 

district court upheld the constitutionality of this provision, 

and we now affirm.

I.

A.

Jamey Wilkins, the plaintiff, was a prisoner in the custody 

of the North Carolina Department of Correction (now the North 

Carolina Department of Public Safety). On June 13, 2007, he was 

incarcerated at the Lanesboro Correctional Institute in Polkton, 

North Carolina, when Officer Alexander Gaddy, the defendant, 

escorted another inmate past his cell. Wilkins and Officer 

Gaddy became embroiled in an argument that resulted in Officer 

Gaddy opening Wilkins’s cell and physically subduing him. 

According to Wilkins, Officer Gaddy lifted and then slammed him 

to the concrete floor where, once pinned, Officer Gaddy punched, 
4

kicked, kneed, and choked Wilkins until the officer was removed 

by another member of the corrections staff. Wilkins alleged 

that the altercation caused him a bruised heel, back and neck 

pains, headaches, and other health complications.

B.

Following the incident, Wilkins filed a pro se civil rights 

suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claiming that Officer Gaddy 

“maliciously and sadistically” assaulted him with “excessive 

force” in violation of the Eighth Amendment. The district court 

dismissed the suit when it concluded that Wilkins had failed to 

state a claim upon which relief could be granted because he had 

not alleged more than a de minimis injury. We affirmed. 

Wilkins v. Gaddy, 308 F. App’x 696 (4th Cir. 2009).

The Supreme Court granted Wilkins’s petition for certiorari 

and reversed, holding that the “core judicial inquiry” in Eighth 

Amendment claims is not focused on the “extent of the injury” 

sustained by the plaintiff but rather the “nature of the force” 

used in the purported assault. Wilkins v. Gaddy, 559 U.S. 34, 

39 (2010). Although it remanded for further proceedings, the 

Supreme Court “express[ed] no view on the underlying merits” of 

Wilkins’s claim and noted that “the relatively modest nature of 

his alleged injuries will no doubt limit the damages he may 

recover.” Id. at 40. 
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Wilkins obtained representation upon remand from North 

Carolina Prisoner Legal Services and proceeded to trial. The 

jury returned a verdict holding Officer Gaddy responsible for 

using excessive force against Wilkins, but declined to award 

compensatory or punitive damages. Instead, it awarded only 

nominal damages of $0.99. The district court entered judgment 

for Wilkins in the amount of $1. Wilkins, as the prevailing 

party, filed a motion under the fee-shifting provision of 42 

U.S.C. § 1988 for $92,306.25 in attorneys’ fees. While 

acknowledging that fee awards in prisoner lawsuits are capped by 

§ 1997e(d)(2), Wilkins argued that this section of the PLRA 

violated the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection component by 

irrationally treating prisoner and non-prisoner litigants 

differently.

The magistrate judge to whom the matter had been referred 

calculated the award pursuant to § 1997e(d)(2) and recommended 

that Wilkins’s lawyers be awarded $1.40.*

 Wilkins reiterated his 

equal protection challenge before the district court, but the 

court found § 1997e(d)(2) to be a constitutional exercise of 

legislative authority. Specifically, the district court held 

 * The magistrate judge applied the fee cap in § 1997e(d)(2) 

and found that the maximum permissible award was $1.50. Next, 

because § 1997e(d)(2) also requires that some of the plaintiff’s 

judgment apply toward his attorneys’ fee award, the magistrate 

judge reduced Wilkins’s fee award to $1.40.
6

that the classification between prisoners and non-prisoners in 

§ 1997e(d)(2) was rationally related to legitimate government 

interests, including reducing marginal prisoner lawsuits and 

protecting the public fisc. It further noted that the rational 

basis standard of review commands judicial deference to 

legislative acts unless the relationship of the chosen means to 

the desired ends is bereft of logical support. Consequently, 

the district court declined to strike down § 1997e(d)(2), 

adopted the magistrate judge’s recommendation, and awarded 

Wilkins’s counsel $1.40 in attorneys’ fees. Wilkins now 

appeals.

II.

Wilkins seeks the full award of $92,306.25 in attorneys’ 

fees for his counsel. To that end, he contends that the fee cap 

in § 1997e(d)(2) creates a distinction between prisoner and nonprisoner litigants that cannot stand under the Fifth Amendment. 

First, Wilkins does admit that courts do not review 

classifications involving prisoners with strict scrutiny. He 

asserts, however, that statutes governing inmates still require 

a heightened standard of review because of prisoners’ unique 

characteristics. Second, he argues that § 1997e(d)(2) fails 

even ordinary rational basis review because it arbitrarily and 

irrationally “discriminates against prisoner civil rights 
7

litigants” in that the fee cap bears “no rational relationship” 

to the admittedly legitimate governmental objectives at which it 

is aimed. Appellant’s Br. 7. We are not persuaded by either 

contention.

A.

Government may not constitutionally deny to any person the 

equal protection of the laws. But this principle is not and 

cannot be absolute because it is a “practical necessity that 

most legislation classif[y] for one purpose or another, with 

resulting disadvantage to various groups or persons.” Romer v. 

Evans, 517 U.S. 620, 631 (1996). Indeed, unless a statute 

affects a fundamental right or some protected class, courts 

generally accord the legislation a “strong presumption of 

validity” by applying a rational basis standard of review. 

Heller v. Doe, 509 U.S. 312, 319 (1993).

This standard is quite deferential. It simply requires 

courts to determine whether the classification in question is, 

at a minimum, rationally related to legitimate governmental 

goals. City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Ctr., Inc., 473 U.S. 

432, 440 (1985). In other words, the fit between the enactment 

and the public purposes behind it need not be mathematically 

precise. As long as Congress has a reasonable basis for 

adopting the classification, which can include “rational 

speculation unsupported by evidence or empirical data,” the 
8

statute will pass constitutional muster. FCC v. Beach 

Commc’ns., Inc., 508 U.S. 307, 315 (1993). The rational basis 

standard thus embodies an idea critical to the continuing 

vitality of our democracy: that courts are not empowered to “sit 

as a superlegislature to judge the wisdom or desirability of 

legislative policy determinations.” City of New Orleans v. 

Dukes, 427 U.S. 297, 303 (1976).

Wilkins accepts the fact that we should apply rational 

basis review to analyze the fee cap in § 1997e(d)(2). However, 

he would have us apply a “‘more searching form of rational basis 

review,’” Appellant’s Br. 9 (quoting Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 

558, 580 (2003) (O’Connor, J., concurring)), because he contends 

that the rational basis standard is in reality a “spectrum” and 

that “prisoners possess certain characteristics which warrant 

the court to apply the rational basis review in a less rigid 

manner,” Appellant’s Br. 8-9. These include prisoners’ relative 

inability to protect themselves in the political process and the 

historical discrimination against prisoners in employment, 

housing, and welfare programs. In effect, Wilkins asks us to 

give less deference to legislative classifications involving 

prison litigants.

We do not think that sliding-scale rational basis is a 

permissible approach here. Our precedent clearly holds that 

prisoners are not a “suspect class.” Giarratano v. Johnson, 521 
9

F.3d 298, 303 (4th Cir. 2008) (internal quotation marks 

omitted). The Supreme Court has only applied heightened 

scrutiny when it finds that a particular class is “quasisuspect” in that it possesses immutable characteristics, faces 

historic or ongoing discrimination, or is subject to arbitrary 

burdens on some basis beyond its ability to control. City of 

Cleburne, 473 U.S. at 439-43. Because breaking the law is a 

voluntary act and many prisoners will eventually be released, 

the “status of incarceration is neither an immutable 

characteristic . . . , nor an invidious basis of 

classification.” Moss v. Clark, 886 F.2d 686, 690 (4th Cir. 

1989). “Moreover, it would be ironic for the law to confer 

special solicitude upon a class whose members had violated it.” 

Id. Nor is any fundamental right of access to the courts 

involved, for no party possesses an entitlement to a 

congressional declaration that its attorneys’ fees in a federal 

lawsuit shall be borne by the non-prevailing party. See Johnson 

v. Daley, 339 F.3d 582, 586 (7th Cir. 2003) (en banc) (finding 

that there is no “fundamental right to have one’s adversary, or 

the public treasury, defray all or part of the cost of 

litigation”).

These considerations militate in favor of ordinary rational 

basis review. Several of our sister circuits have concluded 

that classifications involving prisoners should not receive 
10

strict scrutiny, and their reasoning also supports the parallel 

conclusion that heightened scrutiny is not warranted. See, 

e.g., Boivin v. Black, 225 F.3d 36, 42 (1st Cir. 2000) 

(“[P]risoners are simply not a protected class.”); Zehner v. 

Trigg, 133 F.3d 459, 463 (7th Cir. 1997) (finding the argument 

that prisoners are a protected class “completely unsupported”). 

We note also that the Supreme Court has used the rational basis 

standard when considering the constitutionality of a statute 

distinguishing between jailed and non-jailed persons, McDonald 

v. Bd. of Election Comm’rs of Chicago, 394 U.S. 802, 807-09 

(1969), and has not applied heightened scrutiny to 

classifications involving prisoners absent another protected 

characteristic, such as race, see Johnson v. California, 543 

U.S. 499, 505-09 (2005). Accordingly, we decline Wilkins’s 

invitation to apply heightened equal protection scrutiny in this 

case.

B.

We turn now to Wilkins’s rational basis challenge. When a 

litigant files suit in a court in the United States, he or she 

will typically pay the costs associated with hiring an attorney. 

This is the “American Rule” and it governs litigation in federal 

courts “absent explicit congressional authorization” to the 

contrary. Key Tronic Corp. v. United States, 511 U.S. 809, 814-

15 (1994) (internal quotation marks omitted). Congress 
11

exercised its power to partially abrogate the American Rule when 

it enacted the Civil Rights Attorney’s Fees Awards Act of 1976, 

42 U.S.C. § 1988, which granted district courts the authority to 

award attorneys’ fees from state coffers to the prevailing party 

in a civil rights action. By providing lawyers with a suitable 

award if they could achieve success in court, this fee-shifting 

provision encouraged them to take civil rights cases that they 

otherwise might not and thus ensured “effective access to the 

judicial process for persons with civil rights grievances.” 

Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 429 (1983) (internal

quotation marks omitted).

But what Congress provides, Congress can adjust or take 

away. It adopted the PLRA almost 20 years later in an effort to 

reduce the “ever-growing number of prison-condition lawsuits 

that were threatening to overwhelm the capacity of the federal 

judiciary.” Anderson v. XYZ Correctional Health Services, Inc., 

407 F.3d 674, 676 (4th Cir. 2005). The legislative history of 

the Act is replete with statements that inmate civil rights 

litigation consumed an undue amount of both executive and 

judicial resources. See Intervenor Br. of the United States 6-8 

(compiling congressional statements). In an effort to address 

this problem, the PLRA included, among other things, limitations 

on attorneys’ fees awards. Section 1997e(d)(2) states in 

relevant part that “[i]f the award of attorney's fees is not 
12

greater than 150 percent of the judgment, the excess shall be 

paid by the defendant.” While this language is “not a model of 

clarity,” its import is apparent. Shepard v. Goord, 662 F.3d 

603, 607 (2d Cir. 2011). Although § 1997e(d)(2) does not remove 

a district court’s discretion to shift attorneys’ fees, it caps 

awards at 150 percent of a prisoner’s monetary judgment. See

id. at 608 (noting that every circuit to consider § 1997e(d)(2) 

has construed it to impose a fee cap and holding the same). 

Wilkins does not contest this interpretation. But non-prisoner 

civil rights litigants are not subject to the fee cap; it is 

this distinction that Wilkins claims is unconstitutional.

Congress’s goals in enacting § 1997e(d)(2) include, as 

noted earlier, reducing marginal or frivolous prisoner civil 

rights lawsuits and protecting the public fisc. See Jackson v. 

State Bd. of Pardons and Paroles, 331 F.3d 790, 798 (11th Cir. 

2003). Wilkins agrees that these goals are legitimate, but 

contends that § 1997e(d)(2) is so poorly tailored to these ends 

that it could not possibly be expected to advance them. 

Overall, he insists the fee cap is a thoroughly irrational 

approach to the prison litigation problem. While the provision 

may not be the only or the optimal way of stemming baseless 

inmate lawsuits, we hold that Congress acted rationally in 

adopting it.
13

It was not irrational for Congress to believe that inmates 

have certain litigation advantages and certain incentives to 

file lawsuits not shared by non-prisoner plaintiffs. Inmates 

are provided with the necessities of life at state expense; they 

receive “free paper, postage, and legal assistance”; and they 

may have greater amounts of free time in which to prepare their 

claims. Roller v. Gunn, 107 F.3d 227, 234 (4th Cir. 1997). 

Furthermore, prisoners might see legal proceedings as a “means 

of gaining a short sabbatical in the nearest Federal 

courthouse,” Anderson, 407 F.3d at 676 (internal quotation marks 

omitted), or as a tool to “intimidat[e] members of the prison 

staff,” Hadix v. Johnson, 230 F.3d 840, 844 (6th Cir. 2000). 

Congress was entitled to conclude that this mix of advantages 

and incentives finds no analogue outside prison walls.

Of course, the above propositions are not indisputable, and 

in certain respects, prison litigants may suffer some litigation 

disadvantages in relation to their non-prison counterparts. But 

under the rational basis standard, Congress could have believed 

that the danger of frivolous, marginal, and trivial claims was 

real and that a legislative solution was required to equalize 

prisoner and non-prisoner litigants. And although the 

congruence between § 1997e(d)(2) and the goal of reducing 

meritless and insubstantial prisoner lawsuits may not be 

perfect, it does exist. Walker v. Bain, 257 F.3d 660, 670 (6th 
14

Cir. 2001). A cap on attorneys’ fees awards requires attorneys 

“to ask if the game is worth the candle” and demand greater odds 

of success before agreeing to represent a prisoner. Boivin, 225 

F.3d at 45. If a prisoner cannot find counsel, it may dissuade 

him or her from bringing such a claim at all. Or so Congress 

might reasonably have believed.

Wilkins argues that even more basic flaws in the provision 

require its invalidation. He claims there is no coherent 

connection between § 1997e(d)(2) and limiting frivolous lawsuits 

because the fee cap applies only to successful cases and 

Congress cannot rationally disadvantage meritorious claims of 

constitutional violations in the name of reducing meritless 

litigation. But Congress could rationally have determined that 

limiting an attorneys’ fee award incentive ex ante, before the 

outcome is known, prevents the filing of at least some 

ultimately meritless claims. Johnson, 339 F.3d at 594-95. 

Moreover, even though there exist other rules that discourage 

attorneys from bringing frivolous claims, such as sanctions 

under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 and § 1988’s 

requirement that “reasonable attorney’s fee[]” awards go only to 

a “prevailing party,” nowhere in the Constitution does it say 

that Congress is limited to a single legislative solution to a 

perceived social ill. Id. at 593-94.
15

It is true, as Wilkins emphasizes, that Farrar v. Hobby

already holds that district courts should decline to award 

attorneys’ fees if the prevailing party suffers only minimal 

harm. 506 U.S. 103, 114-16 (1992). But Farrar does nothing 

more than direct courts to consider the prevailing party’s 

“extent of success” when determining the appropriate attorneys’ 

fee award under cases subject to the fee-shifting provision in 

§ 1988. Id. at 116 (internal quotation marks omitted). By 

contrast, § 1997e(d)(2) categorically limits a district court’s 

discretion solely in prisoner civil rights lawsuits. These 

rules, while overlapping, are not co-extensive. Indeed, 

district courts after Farrar occasionally dispensed substantial 

attorneys’ fees awards to prevailing parties even when they 

received only minimal judgments. See, e.g., Wilcox v. City of 

Reno, 42 F.3d 550 (9th Cir. 1994) (upholding an award of $66,535 

in attorneys’ fees because the district court properly exercised 

its discretion under Farrar despite a $1 judgment for the 

plaintiff); Jones v. Lockhart, 29 F.3d 422 (8th Cir. 1994) 

(upholding the district court under Farrar and awarding $10,000 

in attorneys’ fees to a prisoner litigant who received a 

judgment of $2). Even if Farrar makes the fee cap mostly 

redundant, as Wilkins claims, Congress is not constitutionally 

forbidden from enacting legislation simply because some other 

rule aims to resolve the same problem in a different way.
16

Wilkins further contends that the fee cap is fatally 

defective because it stands no chance of doing its job. It will 

not, in his view, dissuade prisoners from filing civil rights 

lawsuits; rather, they will simply proceed pro se, even if their 

claims are frivolous, marginal, or trivial. The precise extent 

to which the cap will accomplish the congressional purpose is 

not for us to decide, however, for Congress could reasonably 

conclude that at least some meritless and insubstantial lawsuits 

would go unfiled when prisoners find themselves required to 

“shoulder the entire workload” of litigating their cases. 

Walker, 257 F.3d at 669.

We need not tarry over Wilkins’s final contention: that 

§ 1997e(d)(2) is not a reasonable way to conserve public funds. 

Protection of the public fisc is a core responsibility of the 

legislative branch. Indeed, as to federal expenditures, the 

Supreme Court has affirmed Congress’s control of the purse 

strings: “[The Appropriations Clause] is to assure that public 

funds will be spent according to the letter of the difficult 

judgments reached by Congress as to the common good and not 

according to the individual favor of Government agents or the 

individual pleas of litigants.” Office of Pers. Mgmt. v. 

Richmond, 496 U.S. 414, 428 (1990). The extent to which 

individual litigants should have their lawyers paid by the 

people involves the setting of priorities sufficiently akin to 
17

the appropriations process that we are loath to interfere. 

Wilkins sought over $92,000 in attorneys’ fees on a judgment of 

$1. Congress was free to conclude that fee awards so 

disproportionate to a monetary judgment are an unwise use of 

public funds.

The Supreme Court has made clear that determining 

attorneys’ fees awards “should not result in a second major 

litigation.” Fox v. Vice, 131 S. Ct. 2205, 2216 (2011) 

(internal quotation marks omitted). The simple, mathematical 

formula embodied in § 1997e(d)(2) rationally forestalls 

collateral fee litigation while ensuring that the incentive 

provided by an attorneys’ fee award still attaches to the most 

injurious civil rights violations.

Our ruling upholding the fee cap in § 1997e(d)(2) is 

anything but novel. It is in accord with every other circuit to 

consider this provision of the PLRA. See Parker, 581 F.3d at 

200; Johnson, 339 F.3d at 583; Jackson, 331 F.3d at 792-93; 

Foulk v. Charrier, 262 F.3d 687, 691 (8th Cir. 2001); Walker, 

257 F.3d at 663; Boivin, 225 F.3d at 38. As noted in Shepard, 

662 F.3d at 609, the “argument that [§ 1997e(d)(2) is 

unconstitutional] has been uniformly rejected by the circuits in 

which such issues have been raised.” We now join those courts
18

and affirm the judgment of the district court upholding the 

constitutionality of § 1997e(d)(2).

AFFIRMED