Background
James Meeks sought to appeal without prepaying fees after the district court dismissed his case for failure to state a claim. That dismissal was his third qualifying strike under the Prison Litigation Reform Act, which generally bars a prisoner with three strikes from bringing a civil action or appeal in forma pauperis unless the prisoner faces imminent danger of serious physical injury.
Meeks argued that the dismissal should not trigger the three-strikes bar while he was appealing that same dismissal. The Fifth Circuit had previously identified that question as unresolved, and other federal courts of appeals had divided over whether a prisoner may proceed in forma pauperis when appealing the judgment that constitutes the third strike.
The Court’s Holding
The Fifth Circuit held that a third qualifying dismissal counts as a strike immediately, even when the prisoner is appealing that very dismissal. The court reasoned that the PLRA’s text and the Supreme Court’s decision in Coleman v. Tollefson require a qualifying dismissal to count while it remains on appeal, whether the pending appeal concerns another case or the third-strike case itself.
The court also concluded that Coleman overruled the Fifth Circuit’s earlier rule in Adepegba v. Hammons that a dismissal does not count as a strike until appellate remedies have been exhausted or waived. Because Meeks’s district-court dismissal was his third strike and no imminent-danger exception was established, the court denied his motion to proceed in forma pauperis on appeal.
Key Takeaways
- A qualifying PLRA dismissal counts as a strike even while that dismissal is being appealed.
- The rule applies when the pending appeal directly challenges the third-strike dismissal itself.
- The Fifth Circuit treated its prior exhaustion-or-waiver rule in Adepegba as overruled by the Supreme Court’s decision in Coleman.
Why It Matters
The published order resolves an open question in the Fifth Circuit and limits prisoners’ ability to obtain appellate review without prepaying fees after receiving a third qualifying dismissal. Prisoners appealing the judgment that creates their third strike must pay the required fees unless they satisfy the PLRA’s imminent-danger exception.
The decision also places the Fifth Circuit on the side of the circuit split that applies the three-strikes bar to an appeal of the third-strike judgment itself.