Court Opinion

ID: 9495377
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:01:34.235098+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:59.379164
License: Public Domain

McKEOWN, Circuit Judge,
Concurring in judgment:
I concur in the panel’s judgment: Should the government fail to rebut Lott’s claim on remand that he was denied access to his legal papers for eighty-two days, an obstacle to timely filing that certainly would have been beyond his control, Lott is entitled to equitable tolling. I would reach this conclusion, however, by the more direct and practical approach recently adopted by our court en banc in Socop-Gonzalez v. INS, 272 F.3d 1176 (9th Cir.2001) (en banc).
When circumstances beyond the petitioner’s control delay timely filing of the petition, then we need only ask “whether [the petitioner] filed within the limitations period after tolling is taken into account.” Id. at 1196. In other words, we simply stop the clock. We explicitly do not make a further inquiry concerning whether the. petitioner “could reasonably have been expected to file his motion ... in the [time] remaining in the limitations period.” Id. at 1195. We rejected this additional step in large part because it “promotes inconsistency of application and uncertainty of calculation, thus undermining two of the purposes served by statutes of limitations.” Id.; see also Burnett v. N.Y. Cent. R. Co., 380 U.S. 424, 435-36, 85 S.Ct. 1050, 13 L.Ed.2d 941 (1965).
A year should be 365 days not just for those fortunate enough to be free of any obstacles to filing, but for all petitioners— particularly for those who find their time to prepare a petition shrinking because of impediments beyond their control. “[A] court arguably usurps congressional authority when it tolls and then rewrites the statute of limitations by substituting its own subjective view of how much time a plaintiff reasonably needed to file suit.” Socop, 272 F.3d at 1196.
In the context of the habeas limitations period, we have consistently held that equitable tolling is inappropriate unless “extraordinary circumstances beyond a prisoner’s control make it impossible to file a petition on time.” Corjasso v. Ayers, 278 F.3d 874, 877 (9th Cir.2002) (quoting Calderon v. U.S. Dist. Court (Beeler), 128 F.3d 1283, 1288 (9th Cir.1997)). I agree with the panel here that this is the controlling standard. But I cannot agree with that part of the majority’s opinion that appears to address the very question So-cop has precluded, namely whether the petitioner “could reasonably have been expected to file his motion ... in the [time] remaining in the limitations period.” 272 F.3d at 1195. Such a characterization of the impossibility requirement implies a type of but-for causation analysis was squarely rejected in Socop. Once the high hurdle of “extraordinary circumstances” has been overcome, the clock stops for the duration of such circumstances. Simply put, it is enough to say that the impossibility requirement (assuming this ever was a separate element) is satisfied when tolling the period in question would make the petition otherwise timely.
This is not to say that I necessarily disagree with the majority’s conclusion that Lott’s confusion about the state of the law, the timing of his filing deadline, and the difficulties faced by the pro se prisoners in general all point toward granting Lott equitable tolling in this case. Rather, in my mind, Lott’s predicament only serves to highlight another important purpose of equitable tolling that permeates all *927habeas cases: the need for certainty of application.
Under the majority’s approach to tolling, assessing the availability of equitable relief is opaque at best, thus frustrating a petitioner’s efforts to utilize the full limitations period. Instead, the prisoner is left guessing whether a court will determine if any remaining time from the original limitations period was otherwise adequate to prepare a petition or, in this case, whether the petitioner could have reasonably believed an attempt to file on time was futile. See majority op. at 922. Though perhaps not the case here, the resulting uncertainty has the potential to provide petitioners with the perverse “incentive to rush to court without fully considering [their] claim — a policy that serves none of the parties involved.” Socop, 272 F.3d at 1196. On the other hand, under the tolling-approached adopted in Socop, “there may be uncertainty in any given case whether equitable tolling will apply at all, [but] the parties are able to calculate with some certainty the date on which the period would run if tolling is applied, and act accordingly.” Id. at 1195.
In sum, considering the pro se prisoner’s less-than-ideal lot as a litigant, I can find nothing in the context of a civil habeas suit that would diminish the tolling concerns addressed in Socop. Cf. Rand v. Rowland, 154 F.3d 952, 958 (9th Cir.1998) (en banc) (recognizing “the unique handicaps of incarceration” faced by pro se prisoner litigants). The alternative is neither practical nor prudent. Instead of a definite and relatively easy-to-apply limitations period, the courts would be left drawing lines within lines that create new limitations within the one originally imposed by Congress. A year is a year is a year. A year in the context of a statute of limitations should have the same certainty as a year that represents the number of days required for one revolution of the earth around the sun.