United States Court of Appeals
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT
Decided October 3, 2008
No. 06-5339
TYRONE HURT,
APPELLANT
v.
SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION,
APPELLEE
Associated with Nos. 06-5340, 06-5341, 06-5342, 06-5343,
06-5344, 06-5345, 06-5346, 06-5347, 06-5348, 06-5349, 06-
5350, 06-5351, 06-5352, 06-5360, 06-5368, 06-5369, 06-
5370, 06-5387, 06-7185, 06-7186, 06-7187, 06-7188, 06-
7189, 06-7190, 06-7191, 06-7192, 07-5012, 07-5013, 07-
5014, 07-5015, 07-5017, 07-5018, 07-5020, 07-5035, 07-
5096, 07-5193, 07-7001, 07-7003, 07-7004, 07-7005, 07-
7033, 07-7048, and 07-7058.
Appeals from the United States District Court
for the District of Columbia
(Nos. 06cv1787, 06cv1795, 06cv1790, 06cv1793, 06cv1789,
06cv1732, 06cv1794, 06cv1782, 06cv1783, 06cv1784,
06cv1785, 06cv1786, 06cv1730, 06cv1723, 06cv1864,
06cv1878, 06cv1880, 06cv1865, 06cv1879, 06cv1792,
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06cv1791, 06cv1801, 06cv1788, 06cv1780, 06cv1796,
06cv1727, 06cv1720, 07cv0032, 07cv0037, 07cv0039,
07cv0040, 07cv0081, 07cv0082, 07cv0085, 07cv0150,
06cv1446, 07cv0962, 06cv2141, 07cv0083, 06cv0738,
06cv1663, 07cv0327, 06cv1468, 07cv0647)
Tyrone Hurt, pro se, filed the submissions on behalf of
the appellant.
Before: HENDERSON, RANDOLPH and BROWN, Circuit
Judges.
Opinion for the Court filed PER CURIAM.
PER CURIAM: Tyrone Hurt has filed numerous appeals
without paying any filing fees. Finding Hurt abused the
privilege of proceeding before this Court without paying the
usually required fees, we revoke this privilege, dismiss his
forty-four pending cases and bar him from filing any future
civil appeals without paying the required fees.
I.
An extraordinary number of people, institutions, and
inanimate objects have wronged Tyrone Hurt. In just the last
couple of years, Hurt has sued the Declaration of
Independence, Black’s Law Dictionary, the United Nations,
agencies of the District of Columbia and the Federal
Government, and various courts and their officers. Hurt has
claimed the existence of state supreme courts violates the
Eighth Amendment, requested the Secret Service and the
President’s Cabinet be declared unconstitutional, and
demanded the deportation of a Spanish-speaking government
employee. See Hurt v. The Declaration of Independence, No.
3
07cv0647, 3/30/07 Mem. Op. and Order at 2–4 & n.4–7
(summarizing filings). Nor are the slights Hurt suffered mere
glancing blows; he routinely demands trillions of dollars in
damages. In the overwhelming majority of these suits, the
district court granted Hurt’s application to proceed in forma
pauperis (“IFP”)—in other words, without paying any filing
fees. In each case, the district court then dismissed Hurt’s
suit as meritless.
Not surprisingly, Hurt disagreed with these dismissals
and has filed more than seventy appeals with this Court since
2006. Hurt paid no filing fees, usually relying upon the IFP
status the district court granted him. See D.C. CIRCUIT RULE
24(a)(3). After summarily dismissing more than twenty-five
of Hurt’s appeals, we held the rest in abeyance pending the
resolution of his suit against this Circuit. Three judges sitting
by designation disposed of both that suit and a related claim,
Hurt v. United States Court of Appeals for the Dist. of
Columbia Circuit Banc, 264 F. App’x 1 (D.C. Cir. 2008) (per
curiam); Hurt v. United States Dist. Court Judges, 258 F.
App’x 341 (D.C. Cir. 2007) (per curiam), and Hurt’s forty-
four remaining appeals became active again. This Court then
ordered Hurt to show cause why we should not both revoke
his IFP status for the pending appeals and deny him IFP status
for any future civil appeals.
II.
The United States Code allows federal courts to
“authorize the commencement, prosecution or defense of any
suit … or appeal therein, without prepayment of fees,” but
also requires them to dismiss “frivolous or malicious” cases
and cases seeking monetary relief from defendants immune
therefrom. 28 U.S.C. §§ 1915(a), (e)(2). This Circuit grants
IFP status to various plaintiffs, see D.C. CIRCUIT RULE 24, but
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asserts its discretion to deny or revoke this privilege for
abusive litigants, looking to “the number, content, frequency,
and disposition of [their] previous filings,” Butler v. Dep’t of
Justice, 492 F.3d 440, 445 (D.C. Cir. 2007). Given Hurt’s
history of filing frivolous claims and appeals, he easily
satisfies the standard for revocation of the IFP privilege.
However, his penchant for litigation as a form of costless
entertainment compels us to go one step further and ask
whether we may bar him from proceeding IFP in all future
civil appeals.
When “the number, content, frequency, and disposition”
of a litigant’s filings show an especially abusive pattern, we
think a court may deny IFP status prospectively. We
recognize this holding conflicts with In re Green, 669 F.2d
779, 781 (D.C. Cir. 1981) (per curiam), where this Circuit,
vacating a district court order requiring an abusive litigant to
pay filing fees and $100 cash deposit in any future suits,
explained section 1915(a) requires a court to determine
“separately in every case” whether to allow a litigant to
proceed in forma pauperis. Id. at 786.
Subsequent Supreme Court cases suggest Green was
wrong when it held section 1915(a) prohibited prospective
denials of IFP status.1 For example, in In re McDonald, 489
U.S. 180 (1989) (per curiam), the Court directed its Clerk not
to process unpaid extraordinary writ petitions from a
particularly abusive litigant, explaining, “[e]very paper filed
with the Clerk of this Court, no matter how repetitious or
1
Since intervening Supreme Court cases have overruled
Green’s holding on this point, we need not resort to en banc
endorsement under Irons v. Diamond, 670 F.2d 265, 268 n. 11
(D.C. Cir. 1981). See In re Sealed Case, 352 F.3d 409, 412 (D.C.
Cir. 2003); see also Policy Statement on En Banc Endorsement of
Panel Decisions at 2–3 (Jan. 17, 1996).
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frivolous, requires some portion of the institution’s limited
resources. A part of the Court’s responsibility is to see that
these resources are allocated in a way that promotes the
interests of justice.” Id. at 184. Importantly, the McDonald
Court made this decision after analyzing section 1915(a), thus
rejecting Green’s contrary interpretation of that section. Id.
at 183–84. Since McDonald, the Supreme Court has
regularly issued blanket prohibitions against granting IFP
status for non-criminal petitions from abusive filers, see, e.g.,
Al-Hakim v. Publix Supermarkets, 128 S. Ct. 712 (2007) (per
curiam); Martin v. D.C. Court of Appeals, 506 U.S. 1 (1992)
(per curiam), and other circuits have relied on the Court’s
pronouncements in prospectively denying IFP status to
abusive litigants, see, e.g., Visser v. Supreme Court of Cal.,
919 F.2d 113, 114 (9th Cir. 1990) (order); Maxberry v. SEC,
879 F.2d 222, 224 (6th Cir. 1989) (per curiam). Finally, in
1996, Congress amended 28 U.S.C. § 1915 to prevent
prisoners who have filed three frivolous, malicious or
meritless claims from proceeding IFP in future cases unless
they are “under imminent danger of serious physical injury.”
See Prison Litigation Reform Act, Pub. L. No. 104-134
§§ 801–10, 110 Stat. 1321 (1996). If such a rule is
appropriate for prisoners, who are severely limited in their
ability to earn money to pay filing fees, surely it is
permissible for similarly vexatious non-incarcerated litigants.
Applying these principles to Hurt’s case, we think “the
number, content, frequency, and disposition” of his filings
shows an especially abusive pattern, aimed at taking
advantage of the IFP privilege. Hurt has brought numerous
meritless appeals—suits targeting institutions, people and
inanimate objects—while asking for sums of money dwarfing
the size of the Federal Government’s annual budget. Indeed,
since the start of 2006, Hurt has filed appeals in over seventy
cases before this Court, none of which had any chance of
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success. If Hurt wishes to continue wasting this Court’s time
by appealing dismissals of his absurd and frivolous claims, he
should have to do it on his own dime.
III.
We revoke Hurt’s IFP privilege, dismiss all his appeals
pending before this Court and direct the Clerk of the Court to
refuse to accept any more of Hurt’s civil appeals that are not
accompanied by the appropriate filing fees.
So ordered.