United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit 

Chicago, Illinois 60604 

Submitted February 24, 2020*

Decided February 26, 2020 

Before 

DIANE P. WOOD, Chief Judge 

WILLIAM J. BAUER, Circuit Judge 

MICHAEL B. BRENNAN, Circuit Judge

No. 19-1259 

STEVEN M. STATHAS, JR., 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v. 

JUDY SMITH, et al., 

 Defendants-Appellees.

 Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. 

No. 18-CV-1456 

William E. Duffin, 

Magistrate Judge. 

O R D E R 

Steven Stathas, a Wisconsin inmate, said he could not afford the photocopying 

costs for the brief he needed to file to appeal the revocation of his supervised release. 

Fearing that the state appellate court would dismiss his case for noncompliance with 

procedural rules, he sued prison and state officials under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for denying 

* The defendants were not served with process and are not participating on 

appeal. We have agreed to decide this case without oral argument because the brief and 

record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would not 

significantly aid the court. FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C). 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION 

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 
No. 19-1259 Page 2 

him access to the courts. A magistrate judge screened the complaint under 28 U.S.C. 

§ 1915A(a) and dismissed it for failure to state a claim.† We affirm. 

After his extended supervision was revoked in 2017, Stathas unsuccessfully 

petitioned the state trial court for release, and then appealed. Wisconsin’s appellate 

court rules required him to file five copies of his brief with the court. See WIS. R. APP. P. 

809.81. Stathas alleged that he did not have money to make copies, so he sought a loan 

from the prison, in accordance with a state policy that provides annual loans up to $200 

to inmates for paper, photocopy work, or postage. See WIS. ADMIN. CODE DOC 309.51. 

He received $50. The prison’s warden denied his demand for additional funds, and the 

appellate court rejected his request to proceed by filing only one copy of his brief. 

Now worried that the state appellate court would dismiss his case, Stathas 

brought this denial-of-access-to-the-courts suit against the prison’s warden, inmatecomplaint examiner, and the state governor, among others. He alleged that the 

defendants unlawfully denied him a loan and left him without the financial means to 

afford postage and make copies of his brief, thereby subjecting his case to the risk of 

dismissal for noncompliance with filing rules. 

A magistrate judge screened and dismissed successive versions of Stathas’s 

complaint, explaining that Stathas had not alleged that he suffered any injury. As for 

Stathas’s allegation that the denial of a loan “could” result in his case’s dismissal, the 

judge said that fear of future injury was an insufficient basis upon which to state a 

denial-of-access claim. Finally, the judge determined that even if the defendants had 

violated state regulations relating to prison loans, that alone did not amount to a 

constitutional violation. 

On appeal, Stathas contends that he pleaded an adequate injury when he alleged 

being injured the moment the defendants denied him additional funds to pay for his 

legal expenses. But pleading a denial-of-access claim, as the magistrate judge properly 

noted, requires a prisoner to allege that the defendants deprived him of access to the 

courts and that he lost a potentially meritorious claim as a result. See Lewis v. Casey, 

518 U.S. 343, 350 (1996); Devbrow v. Gallegos, 735 F.3d 584, 587 (7th Cir. 2013). Stathas 

† Stathas consented to magistrate judge jurisdiction, and the state has permissibly 

given limited consent to magistrate jurisdiction at screening in the Eastern District of 

Wisconsin through a Memorandum of Understanding. See Brown v. Peters, 940 F.3d 932, 

935 (7th Cir. 2019). 
No. 19-1259 Page 3 

alleged only the possibility that the Wisconsin Court of Appeals might in the future 

dismiss his case, not that he already had lost his case. And his brief makes clear that he 

ultimately did not lose his claim: The Wisconsin appellate court eventually remanded to 

the trial court to reconsider his case as a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. He thus 

was not denied access or injured by any lack of access to the courts. 

To the extent Stathas sought to sue the defendants for their alleged violation of 

WIS. ADMIN. CODE DOC 309.51 (the provision allowing prisons to loan up to $200 to 

inmates for paper, photocopy work, or postage), such violations alone do not infringe 

the Constitution. A violation of state law does not by itself violate due process.

See Swarthout v. Cooke, 562 U.S. 216, 221–22 (2011); Tucker v. City of Chicago, 907 F.3d 487, 

494–95 (7th Cir. 2018). Stathas failed not only to plead a constitutional violation for 

denial of access to the courts, but also to explain how the defendants’ alleged violation 

of a state policy gave rise to a constitutional claim. 

We have considered Stathas’s remaining arguments, and none has merit. 

AFFIRMED