Opinion ID: 3002706
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Bridges’s Access to the Courts and Petition for

Text: Redress Claims Bridges alleged three other claims in his complaint. First, intertwined with his free speech claim, Bridges claimed the Defendants retaliated against him for filing an affidavit in the Powe lawsuit in violation of his constitutional right to access the courts. Second, he claimed that one Defendant retaliated against him by filing an unjustified disciplinary charge after he complained about her harassment of him—and another Defendant modified the charge to be more serious—in violation of his right to petition the government for redress of grievances. Third, he claimed the Defendants improperly denied and rejected his grievances, which violated his right to petition the government for redress of grievances. Though he specifically labeled paragraphs in his complaint with these claims and addressed them in his reply to Defendants’ motion to dismiss, the district court dismissed the complaint without independent discussion of these claims. As with the free speech claim, to prevail in an access to the courts or petition for redress of grievances retaliation claim, Bridges must ultimately show that (1) he engaged 22 No. 07-1551 in activity protected by the First Amendment; (2) he suffered a deprivation that would likely deter First Amendment activity in the future; and (3) the First Amendment activity was “at least a motivating factor” in the Defendants’ decision to take the retaliatory action. Woodruff, 542 F.3d at 551 (quoting Massey, 457 F.3d at 716). The First Amendment right to petition the govern- ment for redress of grievances includes the right of access to the courts. Cal. Motor Transp. Co. v. Trucking Unlimited, 404 U.S. 508, 510 (1972); Grossbaum v. Indianapolis-Marion County Bldg. Auth., 100 F.3d 1287, 1294 n.5 (7th Cir. 1996). “[P]ersons in prison, like other individuals, have the right to petition the Government for redress of grievances which, of course, includes ‘access of prisoners to the courts for the purpose of presenting their complaints.’ ” Cruz, 405 U.S. at 321 (quoting Johnson v. Avery, 393 U.S. 483, 485 (1969)); cf. Woodruff, 542 F.3d at 561 (Posner, J., concurring) (emphasizing that the right to petition includes a reasonable right of access to the courts). While the right of access to the courts requires prison officials to provide prisoners with the necessary tools “to attack their sentences, directly or collaterally,” and “to challenge the conditions of their confinement,” Lewis v. Casey, 518 U.S. 343, 355 (1996), it is not an abstract, freestanding right to legal assistance, id. at 351. A prisoner asserting a denial of access claim must show an “actual injury” in the form of interference with a “nonfrivolous legal claim.” Id. at 353. “In other words, the right of access to the courts is tied to and limited by a prisoner’s right to ‘vindication for a separate and distinct right to seek judicial relief for some wrong.’ ” Lehn v. Holmes, 364 No. 07-1551 23 F.3d 862, 865 (7th Cir. 2004) (quoting Christopher v. Harbury, 536 U.S. 403, 415 (2002)). Bridges has no “underlying claim” that implicates his own right of access to the courts. Harbury, 536 U.S. at 415. The only underlying claim in this case is the Powe wrongful death lawsuit, meaning that retaliation against Bridges for providing an affidavit in that lawsuit could only affect the access rights of Powe’s mother. But Bridges cannot rely on another plaintiff’s injury in support of his own denial of access claim. See Casey, 518 U.S. at 357-58 (concluding that the loss of nonfrivolous legal claims by two individual prisoners did not establish the requisite injury for an entire class of prisoners to seek systemwide improvements in the prison’s legal assistance program). Since Bridges has no “right to judicial relief” distinct from Powe’s claim, Harbury, 536 U.S. at 415, his affidavit in the Powe litigation was not a constitutionally protected exercise of his right to access the courts. We have in the past recognized situations where one prisoner may have a First Amendment retaliation claim based on the denial of another prisoner’s right of access to the courts. In Higgason, a prisoner argued that he was transferred to another prison facility after he filed his own lawsuits and assisted other inmates with filing lawsuits. We held that “[i]f a prisoner is transferred for exercising his own right of access to the courts, or for assisting others in exercising their right of access to the courts, he has a claim under § 1983.” Higgason, 83 F.3d at 810. Importantly, however, Higgason was a “jailhouse lawyer,” id. at 24 No. 07-1551 811 n.3, and we have acknowledged that these advocates have standing to assert their fellow inmates’ denial of access claims, see Buise v. Hudkins, 584 F.2d 223, 227 (7th Cir. 1978). Without that standing, prison officials could simply transfer troublesome jailhouse lawyers and leave the remaining inmates “without an alternate means of access to the courts.” Id. at 228; see also Johnson v. Avery, 393 U.S. 483, 487 (1969) (invalidating a prison regulation prohibiting habeas petitioners from obtaining the assistance of a jailhouse lawyer). Unlike the services of a jailhouse lawyer, we do not think that Bridges’s assistance as an affiant-witness was “necessary to vindicate [Powe’s] right of access to the courts.” Thaddeus-X, 175 F.3d at 395. That is especially true since Powe’s mother has already obtained and used Bridges’s affidavit in her lawsuit, suggesting that she suffered no injury through the alleged retaliation against Bridges. See Massey v. Helman, 196 F.3d 727, 740 (7th Cir. 1999) (commenting that a prison physician who gave a deposition in a prisoner lawsuit could not show “that his termination interfered with other prisoners’ access to the courts by confining their ability to gather evidence in support of their cases”). Accordingly, Bridges’s participation in the Powe litigation was not sufficiently connected to Powe’s rights to allow Bridges to assert a denial of access claim. See id. at 739-40 (holding that the prison physician lacked standing to raise the prisoners’ rights of access to the courts). The district court properly dismissed Bridges’s claim alleging retaliation for exercising his right to access the courts. No. 07-1551 25 Moving to Bridges’s next claim, Bridges alleges that one Defendant retaliated against him for exercising his constitutional right to seek redress for the Defendant’s harassment. Bridges contends that he communicated a grievance to the government when he threatened the Defendant that he was going to file a grievance against her because it was inappropriate for her to kick his cell door, turn his lights on and off, and slam his cell trap while he was sleeping. Bridges cites Pearson, in which we “decline[d] to hold that legitimate complaints lose their protected status simply because they are spoken. Nothing in the First Amendment itself suggests that the right to petition for redress of grievances only attaches when the petitioning takes a specific form.” Pearson, 471 F.3d at 741. But it seems implausible that a threat to file a grievance would itself constitute a First Amendmentprotected grievance. Even if the threat were deemed protected activity, Bridges’s allegations do not lead to an inference that the retaliation would deter a person of ordinary firmness from exercising First Amendment activity in the future. Bridges alleges that the Defendant filed an unjustified disciplinary charge, which another Defendant upgraded to a “major offense.” The charge was later dismissed. A single retaliatory disciplinary charge that is later dismissed is insufficient to serve as the basis of a § 1983 action. Cf. Bart, 677 F.2d at 625 (“A tort to be actionable requires injury. It would trivialize the First Amendment to hold that harassment for exercising the right of free speech was always actionable no matter how unlikely to deter a person of ordinary firmness from that exercise . . . .”). This claim was properly dismissed. Pl. Compl. ¶¶ 17-20. 26 No. 07-1551 Bridges’s final claim is that the Defendants improperly dismissed and rejected his attempts to file administrative grievances. This is his only claim that does not arise under a retaliation theory; he complains of a direct violation of his right to petition the government for redress of grievances. He alleges that the Defendants used technicalities to repeatedly reject his grievances. For example, they would claim that he had stated too many issues in one grievance when Bridges was merely attempting to explain the context of the grievance; then when he filed another grievance, they would claim that he had not given them enough background information. The rejected grievances were “directly related to the claims stated in [Bridges’s] complaint.” Pl. Compl. ¶ 21. He did not allege that he was prevented from petitioning for redress of any other grievances. Section 1983 is a tort statute, so Bridges must have suffered a harm to have a cognizable claim. Doe v. Welborn, 110 F.3d 520, 523 (7th Cir. 1997). Because he is currently exercising his right to petition the government for redress of grievances through this lawsuit, he has not been harmed. See Antonelli v. Sheahan, 81 F.3d 1422, 1430 (7th Cir. 1996) (“[Plaintiff’s] invocation of the judicial process indicates that the prison has not infringed his First Amendment right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”). This claim was also properly dismissed. Pl. Compl. ¶¶ 21-24.4 4 Bridges’s allegations may later become relevant, however, because the Prison Litigation Reform Act requires that he exhaust his available administrative remedies before he can (continued...) No. 07-1551 27