Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/577/14-844/
Timestamp: 2019-08-22 08:52:54
Document Index: 513221501

Matched Legal Cases: ['§1915', '§1915', '§1915', '§1915', '§1915', '§1915', '§1915', '§1915']

Bruce v. Samuels :: 577 U.S. ___ (2016) :: Justia US Supreme Court Center
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Bruce v. Samuels, 577 U.S. ___ (2016)
The 1995 Prison Litigation Reform Act provides that prisoners qualified to proceed in forma pauperis must pay an initial partial filing fee of “20 percent of the greater of ” the average monthly deposits in the prisoner’s account or the average monthly balance of the account over the preceding six months, 28 U.S.C. 1915(b)(1). They must pay the remainder in monthly installments of “20 percent of the preceding month’s income credited to the prisoner’s account.” The initial fee is assessed on a per-case basis and may not be exacted if the prisoner has no means to pay it; no monthly installments are required unless the prisoner has more than $10 in his account. Bruce, a federal inmate and a frequent litigant, argued that monthly payments do not become due until obligations previously incurred in other cases were satisfied. The D.C. Circuit disagreed, holding that Bruce’s monthly payments were due simultaneously with monthly payments for earlier cases. A unanimous Supreme Court affirmed. Section 1915(b)(2) calls for simultaneous, not sequential, recoupment of multiple monthly installment payments. The Court rejected Bruce’s reliance on the contrast between the singular “clerk” and the plural “fees” as those nouns appear in the statute, which requires payments to be forwarded “to the clerk of the court . . . until the filing fees are paid.” Section 1915’s text and context support the per-case approach.
Under the 1995 Prison Litigation Reform Act, 28 U.S.C. 1915(b), monthly payments by a prisoner who is filing a case in forma pauperis are due simultaneously with monthly payments for other cases similarly filed.
It is undisputed that the initial partial filing fee is to be assessed on a per-case basis, i.e., each time the prisoner files a lawsuit. In contest here is the calculation of subsequent monthly installment payments. Petitioner Antoine Bruce urges a per-prisoner approach under which he would pay 20 percent of his monthly income regardless of the number of cases he has filed. The Government urges, and the court below followed, a per-case approach under which a prisoner would pay 20 percent of his monthly income for each case he has filed. Courts of Appeals have divided on which of these two approaches §1915(b)(2) orders.[1] To resolve the conflict, we granted certiorari. 576 U. S. ___ (2015).
In 1892, Congress enacted the in forma pauperis (IFP) statute, now codified at 28 U. S. C. §1915, “to ensure that indigent litigants have meaningful access to the federal courts.” Neitzke v. Williams, 490 U. S. 319, 324 (1989) . Reacting to “a sharp rise in prisoner litigation,” Woodford v. Ngo, 548 U. S. 81, 84 (2006) , Congress in 1996 enacted the PLRA, which installed a variety of measures “designed to filter out the bad claims [filed by prisoners] and facilitate consideration of the good,” Coleman v. Tollefson, 575 U. S. ___, ___ (2015) (slip op., at 3) (quoting Jones v. Bock, 549 U. S. 199, 204 (2007) ; alteration in original).
Petitioner Antoine Bruce, a federal inmate serving a 15-year sentence, is a frequent litigant.[2] In the instant case, Bruce challenges his placement in a special management unit at the Federal Correctional Institution in Talladega, Alabama. Pinson v. Samuels, 761 F. 3d 1, 3–4 (CADC 2014).[3] Bruce had previously incurred filing-fee obligations in other cases and maintained that the monthly filing-fee payments for this case would not become due until those prior obligations were satisfied. Id., at 4, 7. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, whose decision is before us for review, rejected Bruce’s argument. Id., at 8–10. Bruce must make monthly filing-fee payments in this case, the court held, simultaneously with such payments in earlier commenced cases. Id., at 8. We agree with the appeals court that §1915(b)(2) calls for simultaneous, not sequential, recoupment of multiple filing fees.
The Circuits following the per-case approach, we conclude, better comprehend the statute. Just as §1915(b)(1) calls for assessment of “an initial partial filing fee” each time a prisoner “brings a civil action or files an appeal” (emphasis added), so its allied provision, §1915(b)(2), triggered immediately after, calls for “monthly payments of 20 percent of the preceding month’s income” simultaneously for each action pursued. The other two paragraphs of §1915(b) confirm that the subsection as a whole is written from the perspective of a single case. See §1915(b)(3) (imposing a ceiling on fees permitted “for the commencement of a civil action or an appeal” (emphasis added)); §1915(b)(4) (protecting the right to “brin[g] a civil action or appea[l] a civil or criminal judgment” (emphasis added)). There is scant indication that the statute’s perspective shifts partway through paragraph (2).[4]
Charles E. Samuels, Jr., et al.