[PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT FILED
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
____________ ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
AUG 29, 2008
No. 06-10536 THOMAS K. KAHN
_____________ CLERK
D.C. Docket No. 05-00153-CV-DHB-1
TRACY ANTHONY MILLER,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
COMMISSIONER JAMES DONALD,
GEORGIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS,
Georgia, et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
______________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Georgia
_____________
(August 29, 2008)
Before TJOFLAT, BLACK and EBEL,* Circuit Judges.
*
Honorable David M. Ebel, United States Circuit Judge for the Tenth Circuit, sitting by
designation.
TJOFLAT, Circuit Judge:
Tracy Anthony Miller is an inmate in the Georgia prison system. He is a
frequent litigant, as plaintiff, in the federal courts in Georgia. Since 1992,
proceeding pro se and in forma pauperis, he has filed at least thirty cases in district
court and has taken nearly as many appeals to this court. The defendants in these
cases are, for the most part, officials of the Georgia Department of Correction. In
the case now before us, he has sued in the Southern District of Georgia the
Commissioner of the Department of Correction and various Department officials
(collectively “Commissioner”) under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, seeking relief for their
continuous infringement of his rights under Title II of the Americans with
Disabilities Act (“ADA”), 42 U.S.C. § 12131 et seq., and section 504 of the
Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U.S.C. § 794.
On receiving Miller’s complaint, the district court, acting sua sponte, took
note of the law suits Miller previously has brought against Department of
Correction officials, examined the complaint’s factual allegations and concluded
that they were frivolous, and dismissed the complaint without prejudice under 28
U.S.C. § 1915(g).1 In its order of dismissal, the court, in an effort to curb Miller’s
1
The district court adopted in full the recommendation of the magistrate judge to whom
Miller’s complaint had been referred.
2
litigious activity, enjoined Miller from submitting further filings with the court,
except in limited circumstances, without paying the unpaid filing fees he has
accrued.2 Miller now appeals. We reverse the district court’s dismissal of
Miller’s complaint, vacate the injunctive provision of the court’s order regarding
future filings, and remand the case for further proceedings.
I
At the time he filed his complaint in this case, Miller was incarcerated in the
Augusta State Medical Prison (“ASMP”). His complaint alleges in substance that
the officials at ASMP failed to make adequate accommodations for his physical
limitations. He is a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair, and as a result of his
immobility, he was and continues to be subjected to physical harm. The officials
also failed to make accommodations for his aliments. They essentially ignored his
kidney condition, which requires catheter treatment and medication, and his
chronic high blood pressure, which requires medication. As an example of the
officials’ disregard of his physical condition, the complaint alleges that the
officials confined him for twenty-four hours a day in a cell too small for his
wheelchair to move and denied him accessible toilets and urine catheters, thereby
2
The unpaid fees amount to $1,329.
3
forcing him to lie in his own bodily waste.3
Miller lacked the means to pay the $250 fee for filing his complaint, so he
sought leave to proceed in forma pauperis (“IFP”) pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1915.
Section 1915(g), as amended by the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995
(“PLRA”), precludes a prisoner from “bring[ing] a civil action . . . under this
section if the prisoner has, on 3 or more prior occasions,” brought an action that
was dismissed either as frivolous or because the complaint failed to state a claim
for relief, “unless the prisoner is under imminent danger of serious physical
injury.” 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g). It is undisputed that Miller has had enough cases
dismissed to fall under this so-called three-strikes provision. See Miller v. Brown,
CV 604-100, 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 28397, at *3 (S.D. Ga. Sept. 15, 2004)
(listing Miller’s qualifying prior cases). In this case, Miller argues that his
allegations of imminent physical danger from continuing mistreatment qualifies
him for the § 1915(g) “imminent danger” exception.
The district court did not overlook Miller’s argument that it should entertain
3
In addition to these allegations concerning conditions of his confinement and inadequate
medical care at ASMP, the complaint alleges that prison officials at unnamed facilities
knowingly placed him in close proximity to other inmates on his “enemy list,” and failed to
intervene when he was repeatedly attacked by other inmates. He has been subjected to all of this
– at the hands of the Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Correction, the warden,
correction officers, medical staff, prosecutors, and judges – because he possesses evidence of
official corruption in Georgia’s prison system.
4
his law suit because it fell within the imminent danger exception. After reviewing
the cases Miller had previously filed challenging conditions of his confinement in
Georgia’s prison system, however, the court concluded that Miller was
“attempting to use claims of ‘imminent danger’ as a means to force a shotgun blast
of other frivolous and duplicative claims into court.” The court observed that
allegations of the complaint were nearly identical to the allegations Miller had
brought against other Georgia prison officials. Two of those cases, Miller v. King,
449 F.3d 1149 (11th Cir. 2006) and Miller v. Pryor, CV 505-029 (M.D. Ga. Aug.
11, 2005), had advanced beyond the screening phase, had bypassed the § 1915(g)
bar, and were still pending. Although King and Pryor concern the conditions at
Georgia State Prison and Men’s State Prison, respectively, the court determined
that Miller’s allegations were duplicative of his complaints in King and Pryor.
The provision of the district court’s dismissal order that enjoined Miller’s
filing activity was drawn from a practice invoked from time to time by the
Southern District of Georgia to curb filing abuses in prisoner cases. With three
narrow exceptions, a prisoner is prohibited from filing any new papers with the
court under § 1915(g) until he has paid all accrued filing fees. The exceptions are
that a prisoner may file (1) papers in a criminal proceedings brought against him
by the state, (2) a timely motion for reconsideration of the filing bar as applied,
5
and (3) a pleading or paper demonstrating that he has been denied access to state
court and has no recourse except to repair to the district court. Noticeably absent
from this list of exceptions is a complaint alleging that the prisoner is under
imminent danger of serious physical injury.
II
Our first task in this appeal is to consider the appropriateness of the filing
injunction and then to consider the dismissal of Miller’s complaint as frivolous.
We review the injunctive provision under the abuse of discretion standard. See
Klay v. United Healthgroup, Inc., 376 F.3d 1092, 1096 (11th Cir. 2004).
The propriety of an injunction against IFP filings by a litigant depends on
weighing the interest of the court to protect its own jurisdiction to hear meritorious
matters against the interest of the IFP litigant presenting his claim for adjudication.
Access to the courts is unquestionably a right of considerable constitutional
significance, see Bounds v. Smith, 430 U.S. 817, 821, 97 S. Ct. 1491, 1494, 52 L.
Ed. 2d 72 (1977), particularly when the individual seeks “vindication of
fundamental civil rights,” Rivera v. Allin, 144 F.3d 719, 724 n.9 (11th Cir. 1998)
(quoting Lyon v. Krol, 940 F. Supp. 1433, 1437 (S.D. Iowa 1996)), including the
right “to be free of unwarranted ‘imminent danger of serious physical injury.’” Id.
at 724 (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g)). When such fundamental interests are at
6
stake, the litigant’s inability to pay the filing fee cannot be a barrier to his access
to the judiciary. See Boddie v. Connecticut, 401 U.S. 371, 374, 91 S. Ct. 780, 784,
28 L. Ed. 2d 113 (1971).
The right of access to the courts “is neither absolute nor unconditional.”
Cofield v. Ala. Pub. Serv. Comm’n, 936 F.2d 512, 516 (11th Cir. 1991) (quoting
In re Green, 669 F.2d 779, 785 (D.C. Cir. 1981)). Conditions and restrictions on
each person’s access are necessary to preserve the judicial resource for all other
persons. Frivolous and vexatious law suits threaten the availability of a well-
functioning judiciary to all litigants. As the Supreme Court has noted, filing fees
in theory discourage frivolous law suits and thus help allocate judicial resources to
more meritorious cases. See In re McDonald, 489 U.S. 180, 184, 109 S. Ct. 993,
996, 103 L. Ed. 2d 158 (1989). “But paupers filing pro se are not subject to the
financial considerations – filing fees and attorney’s fees – that deter other litigants
from filing frivolous petitions.” Id.; see also In re Sindram, 498 U.S. 177, 179,
111 S. Ct. 596, 598, 112 L. Ed. 2d 599 (1991) (directing the clerk of the Court not
to accept further IFP extraordinary writ petitions from the petitioner). Absent
monetary cost as a constraint, the sheer volume of frivolous IFP suits threatens to
undermine the availability of the federal courts to the public. To counter such
threat and to protect its jurisdiction, the district courts are authorized by the All
7
Writs Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1651(a), to restrict access to vexatious and abusive
litigants. Reimposing financial considerations in the form of filing fees on
indigent litigants is one way the courts can fulfill their “constitutional obligation
to protect their jurisdiction from conduct which impairs their ability to carry out
Article III functions.” Procup v. Strickland, 792 F.2d 1069, 1073 (11th Cir. 1986)
(en banc) (per curiam) (quoting In re: Martin-Trigona, 737 F.2d 1254, 1261 (2d
Cir. 1984)).
Yet to the indigent, a filing fee is a blunt instrument that cannot discriminate
between valid and bogus claims. A blanket injunction that prohibits all IFP filings
by a given person would be overinclusive; it would screen out legitimate claims of
the indigent, even if these claims concerned fundamental interests. For this
reason, Congress has been careful to tailor limitations on IFP filings to minimize
the exclusion of valid claims that involve fundamental interests. In the context of
prisoner litigation, Congress was deliberate in leaving an exception for claims of
imminent threat of serious physical injury when it enacted the three-strikes
provision that screens out all other IFP suits as part of the PLRA. See 28 U.S.C.
§ 1915(g). Likewise, when exercising their inherent powers, courts have made
sure that indigent litigants are not completely prohibited from seeking judicial
relief. See, e.g., Procup, 792 F.2d at 1074 (vacating an injunction that prohibited
8
filings by indigent prisoner without an attorney and holding that litigants “cannot
be completely foreclosed from any access to the court.”); cf. Copeland v. Green,
949 F.2d 390, 391 (11th Cir. 1991) (per curiam) (reversing district court’s order
banning IFP litigant from delivering documents to the courthouse because it is
“impermissibly restrictive of his right of access to that court”).
Designing an acceptable procedural device to screen out frivolous IFP
filings requires some degree of nuance, and for that reason “[c]onsiderable
discretion necessarily is reposed in the district court.” Procup, 792 F.2d at 1074.
Our opinion in Procup catalogued a wide range of then-state-of-the-art tools that
various courts have employed to deal with abusive litigants, see id. at 1072-73 &
nn. 2-8 (listing cases and rules), and although Procup is over twenty years old,
those acceptable examples still provide guidance for us today. What all of these
methods have in common is that they do not impose blanket prohibitions on the
litigant. See id. When Procup was decided, we noted that the listed methods of
checking abusive litigants was “intended to be neither exhaustive nor limiting,”
and that “[a]s new ideas develop and old devices prove ineffective, the judiciary
must respond with imaginative new techniques designed to protect the court
access of all litigants.” Id. at 1073. The method used in the Southern District of
Georgia, though novel and undoubtedly effective at keeping out frivolous claims,
9
exceeds the bounds of discretion that courts in this and other circuits have
exercised.
In Cofield v. Alabama Public Service Commission, 936 F.2d 512 (11th Cir.
1991), we addressed a very similar situation involving “an overly litigious fellow”
named Sir Keenan Cofield, an inmate in the Alabama prison system. Id. at 513.
Cofield’s obviously frivolous suits targeted defendants from prison officials to
Burger King, Coca-Cola, and AT&T. See id. The district court for the Northern
District of Alabama sua sponte dismissed all of Cofield’s pending suits and barred
him from filing further claims IFP; the court also required Cofield to obtain leave
of court before filing any papers even after paying a fee. Id. at 514. On appeal,
we agreed with the district court’s factual conclusion that Cofield filed his
meritless complaints out of spite and vanity. See id. at 516-17. As to the propriety
of the court’s injunction against Cofield, we affirmed the provision that required
Cofield to obtain leave of court before filing, but reversed the provision denying
IFP status in all future cases, holding that “[o]ur precedent condemns” the
“prospective shutting [of] the courthouse door.” See id. at 518.
Other courts of appeals have, in the years since Procup was decided,
likewise proceeded right up to the line of prospectively banning all IFP filings by
a litigant, but have yet to cross it. For example, in Cok v. Family Court of Rhode
10
Island, 985 F.2d 32 (1st Cir. 1993), the First Circuit upheld an injunction
prohibiting an abusive litigant from removing family court matters to federal
court, but vacated the additional sanction prohibiting the litigant from filing any
other “unpermitted pro se actions in the district court.” Id. at 36. The court
emphasized that although “the district court is in the best position to set
preconditions on access,” id. (citing Procup, 792 F.2d at 1073), the preconditions
ought to be “limited to restricting improper conduct of the type which the present
record indicates plaintiff has displayed in the past.” Id. Indiscriminate
prohibitions are too broad. The Sixth Circuit also rejected an injunctive order
prohibiting a vexatious plaintiff from “filing any civil lawsuit . . . based upon or
arising out of” the underlying suit. Ortman v. Thomas, 99 F.3d 807, 810-11 (6th
Cir. 1996) (quoting Ortman v. Thomas, 906 F. Supp. 416, 424 (E.D. Mich. 1995)).
The court noted that while sanctions against the abusive plaintiff were appropriate,
“[t]he absolute bar to further litigation . . . is too broad.” Id. at 811. More
recently, the Fourth Circuit vacated an injunction prohibiting a plaintiff from filing
any papers without leave of court. See Cromer v. Kraft Foods N. Am., Inc., 390
F.3d 812, 818-19 (4th Cir. 2004). Although not an IFP case, Cromer turned on the
same right of access to the courts involved here, and it held that an injunction
prohibiting the plaintiff from making “any and all filings” was overbroad. Id. at
11
819. Like the courts in Cok and Ortman, the Fourth Circuit in Cromer also
emphasized that prospective filing limitations ought to bear some relationship to
the litigant’s objectionable actions in pending suits, and cannot be wholesale
restrictions on all future filings in unrelated matters. See id.
The injunction against Miller is similarly overbroad. Miller has indeed filed
several suits alleging similar core facts, i.e., that officials at three different prisons
have failed to provide him with adequate treatment for his medical conditions, and
these suits raise a host of additional incoherent allegations of official
wrongdoings, real or imagined. Assuming that Miller’s claims in this case are
frivolous or repetitive, a narrower injunction could target Miller’s filings arising
from the facts or transactions already raised and litigated in other cases, such as in
Miller v. Pryor and Miller v. King.
We took the same approach in United States v. Flint, 178 Fed. Appx. 964
(11th Cir. 2006) (per curiam). In Flint, a criminal case, the district court enjoined
Flint from filing any further pleadings or motions after he had inundated the court
with papers during his trial and following his conviction. 178 Fed. Appx. at 965.
We vacated the injunction as overbroad because it reached beyond the area in
which Flint had demonstrated a history of abusive litigation, namely the criminal
case itself, and encompassed all unrelated business that Flint might subsequently
12
have with the court. Id. at 970. The court’s expansive injunction in Flint
“improperly infring[ed] on Flint’s right of access to the courts.” Id. (citing
Procup, 792 F.2d at 1072-73).
The injunction in this case likewise goes beyond what is sufficient to protect
the district court’s jurisdiction from Miller’s repetitive filings related to the
conditions of his confinement, and fails to uphold Miller’s right of access to the
courts. The three limited exceptions in the injunction, taken together, do not
provide Miller with meaningful access. The first exception permits Miller to file
only responsive papers in criminal cases brought against him. The second
exception applies only to a “timely filed reconsideration motion,” and obviously
Miller may have a valid claim that arises after the ten-day period for moving the
court to alter or amend a judgment has elapsed, see Fed. R. Civ. P. 59(e). The
third exception, that Miller can file his complaint if he can demonstrate that he
lacks access to the state courts, misses the point that the relevant right in question
is access to the federal courts.
The cases the Commissioner relies upon do not support the district court’s
broad injunction. First, Sloan v. Lesza, 181 F.3d 857 (7th Cir. 1999), which the
Commissioner contends stands for the proposition that courts may bar inmate
litigants from filing any further papers with the court until all outstanding court
13
fees have been paid, is different from Miller’s case in an important way. Although
the Seventh Circuit’s opinion in Sloan does not detail the nature of Sloan’s claim,
the court expressly stated that he was under § 1915(g)’s three-strikes provision
and that he did “not contend that he [was] ‘under imminent danger of serious
physical injury.’” Id. at 859 (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g)). Of course, if Sloan did
not allege imminent danger of serious physical injury, it follows that § 1915(g)
would bar him from filing future cases IFP. The Seventh Circuit’s order merely
added the provision of paying outstanding court fees as an additional monetary
barrier, but it in no way held or even suggested that § 1915(g)’s exception for
allegations of imminent danger of serious physical injury no longer applied.
Second, the Supreme Court’s decisions banning vexatious litigants from
seeking leave to file IFP petitions for extraordinary writs are also inapposite
because they “kept at least one door open by allowing . . . [litigants] to file their
writs of certiorari, by far the most important doorway to Supreme Court review.”
Cofield, 936 F.2d at 518; see, e.g., In re Sindram, 498 U.S. at 179, 111 S. Ct. at
597 (writ of mandamus); In re McDonald, 489 U.S. at 180, 109 S. Ct. 993-94 at
(writ of habeas corpus). As we discussed in Cofield, petitions for extraordinary
writs are treated with skepticism, and “[t]he Court essentially adopted a
presumption of frivolity in these cases,” a posture that is not proper for Miller’s
14
case “because the prospective denial is not limited to his applications for
something so rarely granted as an extraordinary writ.” Cofield, 936 F.2d at 519.
The Commissioner finally urges us to affirm and validate the practice of
issuing these “§ 1915(g)-plus” sanctions because this provision of the PLRA has
proven insufficient for managing inmate litigantion. As a general matter, courts
should be hesitant to supplement the rules and remedies that Congress provides by
statute. The Supreme Court reiterated this view recently in the context of the
PLRA when it held unanimously that because the statute does not require inmate
plaintiffs to plead that they have exhausted the administrative remedies, courts
cannot impose this additional pleading requirement. Jones v. Bock, 549 U.S. 199,
__, 127 S. Ct. 910, 921, 166 L. Ed. 2d 798 (2007). The opinion acknowledges that
combining the substantive PLRA exhaustion requirement, see 42 U.S.C. §
1997e(a), with an additional pleading requirement would screen out more suits,
but also states that there is simply nothing in the language of the PLRA itself that
supports the addition of the pleading rule. See Jones, 549 U.S. at __, 127 S. Ct. at
921-22. Likewise, in this case, it is understandable that § 1915(g) as enacted by
Congress may not be able to screen out as many frivolous lawsuits quickly
enough, yet this perceived deficiency is not an invitation for the district courts to
improve upon the statute. See id. at 921. Of course, this is not to say that the
15
PLRA’s provisions shackle the district courts’ inherent power to protect the
courts’ own jurisdiction. Rather, it offsets the Commissioner’s suggestion –
implicit in the very name “§ 1915(g)-plus” – that the district court’s injunction
does nothing more than execute Congress’s purpose in enacting the PLRA, a
purpose whose imperfect embodiment in a statute can be corrected by the court’s
own superior hindsight. The district courts will continue to develop mechanisms
that protect their own jurisdiction consistent with their inherent power and
limitations, and § 1915(g)’s relatively narrow rule-and-exception pairing neither
subtracts from nor adds to them.
III
We turn now to whether the court erred in dismissing Miller’s complaint.
The appropriate standard of review to apply is not without some ambiguity.
Formally, the district court’s order dismissed the complaint without prejudice
because it denied Miller IFP status. This implies that the dismissal was pursuant
to 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g), which we review de novo. See, e.g., Brown v. Johnson,
387 F.3d 1344, 1347 (11th Cir. 2004). The district court’s order refers to Miller’s
allegations as frivolous, and it is this determination of frivolity that appears to be
dispositive. A court’s sua sponte dismissals based on frivolity are provided for,
and indeed mandated by 28 U.S.C. §§ 1915(e)(2)(B)(i), and 1915A(b)(1), and we
16
review those decisions for abuse of discretion. See Bilal v. Driver, 251 F.3d 1346,
1348-49 (11th Cir. 2001). Because it appears that the district court considered the
allegations of Miller’s complaint frivolous and dismissed the complaint on that
ground, we will review the court’s decision under the abuse of discretion standard.
A claim is frivolous if and only if it “lacks an arguable basis either in law or
in fact.” Neitzke v. Williams, 490 U.S. 319, 327, 109 S. Ct. 1827, 1831-32, 104 L.
Ed. 2d 338 (1989); see also Bilal, 251 F.3d at 1349. The court’s power to dismiss
a claim for frivolity differs and in some ways supercedes the power to dismiss for
failure to state a claim under Rule 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil
Procedure. See Neitzke, 490 U.S. at 327, 109 S. Ct. at 1833. The PLRA “accords
judges not only the authority to dismiss a claim based on an indisputably meritless
legal theory, but also the unusual power to pierce the veil of the complaint’s
factual allegations and dismiss those claims whose factual contentions are clearly
baseless.” Id.; see also Clark v. Ga. Pardons & Paroles Bd., 915 F.2d 636, 639-41
& n.1 (11th Cir. 1990). At the same time, we are mindful that “pro se pleadings
are held to a less stringent standard than pleadings drafted by attorneys and will,
therefore, be liberally construed.” Hughes v. Lott, 350 F.3d 1157, 1160 (11th Cir.
2003) (quoting Tannenbaum v. United States, 148 F.3d 1262, 1263 (11th Cir.
1998) (per curiam)). Thus, wildly implausible allegations in the complaint should
17
not be taken to be true, but the court ought not penalize the litigant for linguistic
imprecision in the more plausible allegations.
The Commissioner’s arguments supporting dismissal all condense to the
point that the allegations of Miller’s complaint are repetitive of the allegations
presented in Miller v. King and Miller v. Pryor. This repetition, the Commissioner
submits, demonstrates that Miller’s complaint clearly “lacks an arguable basis in
law or in fact” and thus should be dismissed for frivolity under various sections of
the PLRA; alternatively, the complaint evidences Miller’s abusive litigation tactics
and should be dismissed as an exercise of the court’s inherent power to protect its
own jurisdiction. Putting aside the question whether mere repetition renders a
claim frivolous, we are not convinced that the record in this case shows Miller’s
claims to be repetitive. As the district court indicated, Miller’s allegations about
the prison’s conditions in this case are strikingly similar to his allegations about
prison conditions in King and Pryor, and this similarity may be due to the actual
existence of similar conditions in the ASMP. However, Miller also checked the
box marked “yes” in the standard prisoner § 1983 form complaint section asking
whether the prisoner has begun “other law suits . . . dealing with the same facts
involved in this action.” The Commissioner would have us interpret this as an
admission that the claim in this case wholly duplicates earlier cases. But we do
18
not hold the pro se complaint to such exacting pleading standards. Read in a more
charitable light, the “same facts involved in this action” likely means that the
prison conditions at ASMP are the same as those in the other prisons in which
Miller had been incarcerated. Because Miller’s ADA claim has at least a plausible
chance of success, see King, 449 F.3d at 1150, we conclude that it has an
“arguable basis in law.”
Miller’s factual allegations, or at least those making up the ADA claim, are
also not so fantastical as to be clearly baseless. The allegations were enough to
survive screening in King. There is no new reason to view them more skeptically
in this case once we consider that the same conditions that existed in the other
prisons that hosted Miller could also prevail in the ASMP.
Finally, we disagree with the Commissioner’s argument that Miller’s
present lawsuit represents abusive litigation warranting dismissal as a sanction.
Of course, “the court can consider [the prisoner’s history of meritless litigation] in
deciding to dismiss a questionable claim.” Clark, 915 F.2d at 641. This case
raises claims and issues similar to those in the still pending cases of King and
Pryor, and we hesitate to characterize those claims as frivolous. See In re Powell,
851 F.2d 427, 431 (D.C. Cir. 1988) (per curiam) (“In making a determination as to
the frivolousness of numerous actions . . . the district court should be careful not to
19
review pending cases.”). The record indicates that Miller has indeed been
repeatedly moved to and from various prisons in Georgia, so one can understand
how the allegations in the complaint could be true of different locations. On
remand, the district court should consider Miller’s ADA claims against the
officials for the conditions in ASMP using the same analysis described in King
and the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Georgia, 546 U.S. 151, 126
S. Ct. 877, 163 L. Ed. 2d 650 (2006).4 Moreover, the outlandish ancillary claims
– such as they can be made out – that are part of Miller’s complaint were properly
dismissed as frivolous. The core ADA claims that are also the subject of King and
Pryor, however, pass this early threshold.
IV
For the foregoing reasons, the provision of the district court’s order
dismissing Miller’s complaint is REVERSED; the provision enjoining Miller’s
future filings is VACATED ; and the case is REMANDED for further
proceedings.
REVERSED, in part; VACATED, in part; and REMANDED.
4
As mentioned in Miller v. King, 449 F.3d 1149 (11th Cir. 2006), the district court
should “determine on a claim-by-claim basis . . . to what extent such alleged misconduct also
violates [the Eighth Amendment to] the Constitution.” Id. at 1150-51.
20
BLACK, Circuit Judge, specially concurring:
The district court’s injunction flowed from a mistaken finding of frivolity.
I would vacate the injunction on that ground alone; therefore, I join in part III of
the majority opinion.
21
Miller v. Donald
Court: Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
Date filed: 2008-08-29
Citations: 541 F.3d 1091
Copy CitationsCombined Opinion