Court Opinion

ID: 9534568
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:41:02.954872+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:31:30.065440
License: Public Domain

HODGES, Vice Chief Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
Today’s decision in Part I authorizes district courts to determine partial filing fees for civil suits brought by inmates. I must dissent. However, I concur in Part II which holds that this petitioner is not entitled to free postage for the return of file-stamped copies of his pleadings.
*1051The majority discusses cases which hold that an indigent’s “last dollar” need not go towards the cost of filing a civil action. As the majority explains, the rationale behind not requiring indigents to demonstrate absolute destitution is that their meager incomes “include no allotment that could be budgeted for the expense to gain access to the courts.” Boddie v. Connecticut, 401 U.S. 371, 373, 91 S.Ct. 780, 783, 28 L.Ed.2d 113 (1971). But inmates are not indigent. They do have an allotment that can be budgeted for the expense of filing a civil suit.
By statute, the Department of Corrections must establish a savings account into which a portion of prison wages are placed. Okla.Stat. tit. 57 § 549(A)(5). That statute also provides that “[fjunds from this account may be used by the inmate for fees or costs in filing a civil action.” Thus an allotment for the costs of filing civil actions is provided for inmates.
Inmates are not destitute. The state provides their meals, clothing, housing, and medical treatment. They are not faced with the lack of means which confronts indigents. Perhaps this is why the Legislature chose to allow for the payment of filing fees out of an inmate’s account.
Even before the Legislature chose to so allow, this Court ordered payment of inmates’ costs and fees in a civil action from the inmates’ trust accounts. Cumbey v. State, 699 P.2d 1094 (Okla.1985), held that inmates’ trust accounts prevented them from proceeding as indigents under a pauper’s affidavit. Cumbey further held that trust account funds
may be released to this Court and to the district courts for payment of filing fees and costs upon proper application and court order. Determination of permission to proceed in forma -pauperis should take place on a step-by-step basis as costs are incurred. The purpose of the requirement is to curb the indiscriminate filing of prisoner civil rights actions, by prompting inmates to confront the initial dilemma which faces most other potential civil litigants: is the merit of the claim worth the cost of pursuing it?
Id. at 1096. Two days after the Cumbey decision, the Legislature amended title 57 to conform to that holding.
Today’s decision fails to recognize the differences in circumstances facing an indigent person and those facing an inmate in the care and custody of the state. When an indigent person uses his or her last dollar to file a civil action, nothing is left for food or shelter. But when an inmate uses the last dollar of an inmate trust account to file a civil action, the state will continue to provide for that inmate’s basic needs.
For that reason, this Court should follow Cumbey’s rationale and prompt inmates to weigh the merits of their civil action against the cost to them as would any other civil litigant. Inmates should be allowed to proceed under a pauper’s affidavit only when no funds remain in their inmate accounts.