Jamey Wilkins v. Officer Gaddy , 734 F.3d 344 ( 2013 )

PUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 12-8148
JAMEY LAMONT WILKINS,
Plaintiff - Appellant,
v.
OFFICER GADDY,
Defendant – Appellee,
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Intervenor.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western
District of North Carolina, at Charlotte. Robert J. Conrad,
Jr., Chief District Judge. (3:08-cv-00138-RJC-DSC)
Argued: September 18, 2013 Decided: November 1, 2013
Before WILKINSON, MOTZ, and FLOYD, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Wilkinson wrote the
opinion, in which Judge Motz and Judge Floyd joined.
ARGUED: David Alexander Strauss, NORTH CAROLINA PRISONER LEGAL
SERVICES, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellant. Kimberly D.
Grande, NORTH CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Raleigh, North
Carolina, for Appellee. Jonathan Heuer Levy, UNITED STATES
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Intervenor. ON
BRIEF: Roy Cooper, North Carolina Attorney General, NORTH
CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Raleigh, North Carolina, for
Appellee. Anne Tompkins, United States Attorney, Charlotte,
North Carolina, Stuart F. Delery, Principal Deputy Assistant
Attorney General, Barbara L. Herwig, Civil Division, UNITED
STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Intervenor.
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WILKINSON, Circuit Judge:
Plaintiff is a state prisoner who challenges the
constitutionality of 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(d)(2), a part of the
Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PLRA), as violating his
right to equal protection of the laws under the Fifth
Amendment’s Due Process Clause. The challenged provision caps
the attorneys’ fee award that a successful prisoner litigant may
recover from the government in a civil rights action at 150
percent of the value of the prisoner’s monetary judgment. The
district court upheld the constitutionality of this provision,
and we now affirm.
I.
A.
Jamey Wilkins, the plaintiff, was a prisoner in the custody
of the North Carolina Department of Correction (now the North
Carolina Department of Public Safety). On June 13, 2007, he was
incarcerated at the Lanesboro Correctional Institute in Polkton,
North Carolina, when Officer Alexander Gaddy, the defendant,
escorted another inmate past his cell. Wilkins and Officer
Gaddy became embroiled in an argument that resulted in Officer
Gaddy opening Wilkins’s cell and physically subduing him.
According to Wilkins, Officer Gaddy lifted and then slammed him
to the concrete floor where, once pinned, Officer Gaddy punched,
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kicked, kneed, and choked Wilkins until the officer was removed
by another member of the corrections staff. Wilkins alleged
that the altercation caused him a bruised heel, back and neck
pains, headaches, and other health complications.
B.
Following the incident, Wilkins filed a pro se civil rights
suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claiming that Officer Gaddy
“maliciously and sadistically” assaulted him with “excessive
force” in violation of the Eighth Amendment. The district court
dismissed the suit when it concluded that Wilkins had failed to
state a claim upon which relief could be granted because he had
not alleged more than a de minimis injury. We affirmed.
Wilkins v. Gaddy, 308 F. App’x 696 (4th Cir. 2009).
The Supreme Court granted Wilkins’s petition for certiorari
and reversed, holding that the “core judicial inquiry” in Eighth
Amendment claims is not focused on the “extent of the injury”
sustained by the plaintiff but rather the “nature of the force”
used in the purported assault. Wilkins v. Gaddy, 559 U.S. 34,
39 (2010). Although it remanded for further proceedings, the
Supreme Court “express[ed] no view on the underlying merits” of
Wilkins’s claim and noted that “the relatively modest nature of
his alleged injuries will no doubt limit the damages he may
recover.” Id. at 40.
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Wilkins obtained representation upon remand from North
Carolina Prisoner Legal Services and proceeded to trial. The
jury returned a verdict holding Officer Gaddy responsible for
using excessive force against Wilkins, but declined to award
compensatory or punitive damages. Instead, it awarded only
nominal damages of $0.99. The district court entered judgment
for Wilkins in the amount of $1. Wilkins, as the prevailing
party, filed a motion under the fee-shifting provision of 42
U.S.C. § 1988 for $92,306.25 in attorneys’ fees. While
acknowledging that fee awards in prisoner lawsuits are capped by
§ 1997e(d)(2), Wilkins argued that this section of the PLRA
violated the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection component by
irrationally treating prisoner and non-prisoner litigants
differently.
The magistrate judge to whom the matter had been referred
calculated the award pursuant to § 1997e(d)(2) and recommended
that Wilkins’s lawyers be awarded $1.40. * Wilkins reiterated his
equal protection challenge before the district court, but the
court found § 1997e(d)(2) to be a constitutional exercise of
legislative authority. Specifically, the district court held
*
The magistrate judge applied the fee cap in § 1997e(d)(2)
and found that the maximum permissible award was $1.50. Next,
because § 1997e(d)(2) also requires that some of the plaintiff’s
judgment apply toward his attorneys’ fee award, the magistrate
judge reduced Wilkins’s fee award to $1.40.
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that the classification between prisoners and non-prisoners in
§ 1997e(d)(2) was rationally related to legitimate government
interests, including reducing marginal prisoner lawsuits and
protecting the public fisc. It further noted that the rational
basis standard of review commands judicial deference to
legislative acts unless the relationship of the chosen means to
the desired ends is bereft of logical support. Consequently,
the district court declined to strike down § 1997e(d)(2),
adopted the magistrate judge’s recommendation, and awarded
Wilkins’s counsel $1.40 in attorneys’ fees. Wilkins now
appeals.
II.
Wilkins seeks the full award of $92,306.25 in attorneys’
fees for his counsel. To that end, he contends that the fee cap
in § 1997e(d)(2) creates a distinction between prisoner and non-
prisoner litigants that cannot stand under the Fifth Amendment.
First, Wilkins does admit that courts do not review
classifications involving prisoners with strict scrutiny. He
asserts, however, that statutes governing inmates still require
a heightened standard of review because of prisoners’ unique
characteristics. Second, he argues that § 1997e(d)(2) fails
even ordinary rational basis review because it arbitrarily and
irrationally “discriminates against prisoner civil rights
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litigants” in that the fee cap bears “no rational relationship”
to the admittedly legitimate governmental objectives at which it
is aimed. Appellant’s Br. 7. We are not persuaded by either
contention.
A.
Government may not constitutionally deny to any person the
equal protection of the laws. But this principle is not and
cannot be absolute because it is a “practical necessity that
most legislation classif[y] for one purpose or another, with
resulting disadvantage to various groups or persons.” Romer v.
Evans, 517 U.S. 620, 631 (1996). Indeed, unless a statute
affects a fundamental right or some protected class, courts
generally accord the legislation a “strong presumption of
validity” by applying a rational basis standard of review.
Heller v. Doe, 509 U.S. 312, 319 (1993).
This standard is quite deferential. It simply requires
courts to determine whether the classification in question is,
at a minimum, rationally related to legitimate governmental
goals. City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Ctr., Inc., 473 U.S.
432, 440 (1985). In other words, the fit between the enactment
and the public purposes behind it need not be mathematically
precise. As long as Congress has a reasonable basis for
adopting the classification, which can include “rational
speculation unsupported by evidence or empirical data,” the
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statute will pass constitutional muster. FCC v. Beach
Commc’ns., Inc., 508 U.S. 307, 315 (1993). The rational basis
standard thus embodies an idea critical to the continuing
vitality of our democracy: that courts are not empowered to “sit
as a superlegislature to judge the wisdom or desirability of
legislative policy determinations.” City of New Orleans v.
Dukes, 427 U.S. 297, 303 (1976).
Wilkins accepts the fact that we should apply rational
basis review to analyze the fee cap in § 1997e(d)(2). However,
he would have us apply a “‘more searching form of rational basis
review,’” Appellant’s Br. 9 (quoting Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S.
558, 580 (2003) (O’Connor, J., concurring)), because he contends
that the rational basis standard is in reality a “spectrum” and
that “prisoners possess certain characteristics which warrant
the court to apply the rational basis review in a less rigid
manner,” Appellant’s Br. 8-9. These include prisoners’ relative
inability to protect themselves in the political process and the
historical discrimination against prisoners in employment,
housing, and welfare programs. In effect, Wilkins asks us to
give less deference to legislative classifications involving
prison litigants.
We do not think that sliding-scale rational basis is a
permissible approach here. Our precedent clearly holds that
prisoners are not a “suspect class.” Giarratano v. Johnson, 521
8
F.3d 298, 303 (4th Cir. 2008) (internal quotation marks
omitted). The Supreme Court has only applied heightened
scrutiny when it finds that a particular class is “quasi-
suspect” in that it possesses immutable characteristics, faces
historic or ongoing discrimination, or is subject to arbitrary
burdens on some basis beyond its ability to control. City of
Cleburne, 473 U.S. at 439-43. Because breaking the law is a
voluntary act and many prisoners will eventually be released,
the “status of incarceration is neither an immutable
characteristic . . . , nor an invidious basis of
classification.” Moss v. Clark, 886 F.2d 686, 690 (4th Cir.
1989). “Moreover, it would be ironic for the law to confer
special solicitude upon a class whose members had violated it.”
Id. Nor is any fundamental right of access to the courts
involved, for no party possesses an entitlement to a
congressional declaration that its attorneys’ fees in a federal
lawsuit shall be borne by the non-prevailing party. See Johnson
v. Daley, 339 F.3d 582, 586 (7th Cir. 2003) (en banc) (finding
that there is no “fundamental right to have one’s adversary, or
the public treasury, defray all or part of the cost of
litigation”).
These considerations militate in favor of ordinary rational
basis review. Several of our sister circuits have concluded
that classifications involving prisoners should not receive
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strict scrutiny, and their reasoning also supports the parallel
conclusion that heightened scrutiny is not warranted. See,
e.g., Boivin v. Black, 225 F.3d 36, 42 (1st Cir. 2000)
(“[P]risoners are simply not a protected class.”); Zehner v.
Trigg, 133 F.3d 459, 463 (7th Cir. 1997) (finding the argument
that prisoners are a protected class “completely unsupported”).
We note also that the Supreme Court has used the rational basis
standard when considering the constitutionality of a statute
distinguishing between jailed and non-jailed persons, McDonald
v. Bd. of Election Comm’rs of Chicago, 394 U.S. 802, 807-09
(1969), and has not applied heightened scrutiny to
classifications involving prisoners absent another protected
characteristic, such as race, see Johnson v. California, 543
U.S. 499, 505-09 (2005). Accordingly, we decline Wilkins’s
invitation to apply heightened equal protection scrutiny in this
case.
B.
We turn now to Wilkins’s rational basis challenge. When a
litigant files suit in a court in the United States, he or she
will typically pay the costs associated with hiring an attorney.
This is the “American Rule” and it governs litigation in federal
courts “absent explicit congressional authorization” to the
contrary. Key Tronic Corp. v. United States, 511 U.S. 809, 814-
15 (1994) (internal quotation marks omitted). Congress
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exercised its power to partially abrogate the American Rule when
it enacted the Civil Rights Attorney’s Fees Awards Act of 1976,
42 U.S.C. § 1988, which granted district courts the authority to
award attorneys’ fees from state coffers to the prevailing party
in a civil rights action. By providing lawyers with a suitable
award if they could achieve success in court, this fee-shifting
provision encouraged them to take civil rights cases that they
otherwise might not and thus ensured “effective access to the
judicial process for persons with civil rights grievances.”
Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 429 (1983) (internal
quotation marks omitted).
But what Congress provides, Congress can adjust or take
away. It adopted the PLRA almost 20 years later in an effort to
reduce the “ever-growing number of prison-condition lawsuits
that were threatening to overwhelm the capacity of the federal
judiciary.” Anderson v. XYZ Correctional Health Services, Inc.,
407 F.3d 674, 676 (4th Cir. 2005). The legislative history of
the Act is replete with statements that inmate civil rights
litigation consumed an undue amount of both executive and
judicial resources. See Intervenor Br. of the United States 6-8
(compiling congressional statements). In an effort to address
this problem, the PLRA included, among other things, limitations
on attorneys’ fees awards. Section 1997e(d)(2) states in
relevant part that “[i]f the award of attorney's fees is not
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greater than 150 percent of the judgment, the excess shall be
paid by the defendant.” While this language is “not a model of
clarity,” its import is apparent. Shepard v. Goord, 662 F.3d
603, 607 (2d Cir. 2011). Although § 1997e(d)(2) does not remove
a district court’s discretion to shift attorneys’ fees, it caps
awards at 150 percent of a prisoner’s monetary judgment. See
id. at 608 (noting that every circuit to consider § 1997e(d)(2)
has construed it to impose a fee cap and holding the same).
Wilkins does not contest this interpretation. But non-prisoner
civil rights litigants are not subject to the fee cap; it is
this distinction that Wilkins claims is unconstitutional.
Congress’s goals in enacting § 1997e(d)(2) include, as
noted earlier, reducing marginal or frivolous prisoner civil
rights lawsuits and protecting the public fisc. See Jackson v.
State Bd. of Pardons and Paroles, 331 F.3d 790, 798 (11th Cir.
2003). Wilkins agrees that these goals are legitimate, but
contends that § 1997e(d)(2) is so poorly tailored to these ends
that it could not possibly be expected to advance them.
Overall, he insists the fee cap is a thoroughly irrational
approach to the prison litigation problem. While the provision
may not be the only or the optimal way of stemming baseless
inmate lawsuits, we hold that Congress acted rationally in
adopting it.
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It was not irrational for Congress to believe that inmates
have certain litigation advantages and certain incentives to
file lawsuits not shared by non-prisoner plaintiffs. Inmates
are provided with the necessities of life at state expense; they
receive “free paper, postage, and legal assistance”; and they
may have greater amounts of free time in which to prepare their
claims. Roller v. Gunn, 107 F.3d 227, 234 (4th Cir. 1997).
Furthermore, prisoners might see legal proceedings as a “means
of gaining a short sabbatical in the nearest Federal
courthouse,” Anderson, 407 F.3d at 676 (internal quotation marks
omitted), or as a tool to “intimidat[e] members of the prison
staff,” Hadix v. Johnson, 230 F.3d 840, 844 (6th Cir. 2000).
Congress was entitled to conclude that this mix of advantages
and incentives finds no analogue outside prison walls.
Of course, the above propositions are not indisputable, and
in certain respects, prison litigants may suffer some litigation
disadvantages in relation to their non-prison counterparts. But
under the rational basis standard, Congress could have believed
that the danger of frivolous, marginal, and trivial claims was
real and that a legislative solution was required to equalize
prisoner and non-prisoner litigants. And although the
congruence between § 1997e(d)(2) and the goal of reducing
meritless and insubstantial prisoner lawsuits may not be
perfect, it does exist. Walker v. Bain, 257 F.3d 660, 670 (6th
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Cir. 2001). A cap on attorneys’ fees awards requires attorneys
“to ask if the game is worth the candle” and demand greater odds
of success before agreeing to represent a prisoner. Boivin, 225
F.3d at 45. If a prisoner cannot find counsel, it may dissuade
him or her from bringing such a claim at all. Or so Congress
might reasonably have believed.
Wilkins argues that even more basic flaws in the provision
require its invalidation. He claims there is no coherent
connection between § 1997e(d)(2) and limiting frivolous lawsuits
because the fee cap applies only to successful cases and
Congress cannot rationally disadvantage meritorious claims of
constitutional violations in the name of reducing meritless
litigation. But Congress could rationally have determined that
limiting an attorneys’ fee award incentive ex ante, before the
outcome is known, prevents the filing of at least some
ultimately meritless claims. Johnson, 339 F.3d at 594-95.
Moreover, even though there exist other rules that discourage
attorneys from bringing frivolous claims, such as sanctions
under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 and § 1988’s
requirement that “reasonable attorney’s fee[]” awards go only to
a “prevailing party,” nowhere in the Constitution does it say
that Congress is limited to a single legislative solution to a
perceived social ill. Id. at 593-94.
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It is true, as Wilkins emphasizes, that Farrar v. Hobby
already holds that district courts should decline to award
attorneys’ fees if the prevailing party suffers only minimal
harm. 506 U.S. 103, 114-16 (1992). But Farrar does nothing
more than direct courts to consider the prevailing party’s
“extent of success” when determining the appropriate attorneys’
fee award under cases subject to the fee-shifting provision in
§ 1988. Id. at 116 (internal quotation marks omitted). By
contrast, § 1997e(d)(2) categorically limits a district court’s
discretion solely in prisoner civil rights lawsuits. These
rules, while overlapping, are not co-extensive. Indeed,
district courts after Farrar occasionally dispensed substantial
attorneys’ fees awards to prevailing parties even when they
received only minimal judgments. See, e.g., Wilcox v. City of
Reno, 42 F.3d 550 (9th Cir. 1994) (upholding an award of $66,535
in attorneys’ fees because the district court properly exercised
its discretion under Farrar despite a $1 judgment for the
plaintiff); Jones v. Lockhart, 29 F.3d 422 (8th Cir. 1994)
(upholding the district court under Farrar and awarding $10,000
in attorneys’ fees to a prisoner litigant who received a
judgment of $2). Even if Farrar makes the fee cap mostly
redundant, as Wilkins claims, Congress is not constitutionally
forbidden from enacting legislation simply because some other
rule aims to resolve the same problem in a different way.
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Wilkins further contends that the fee cap is fatally
defective because it stands no chance of doing its job. It will
not, in his view, dissuade prisoners from filing civil rights
lawsuits; rather, they will simply proceed pro se, even if their
claims are frivolous, marginal, or trivial. The precise extent
to which the cap will accomplish the congressional purpose is
not for us to decide, however, for Congress could reasonably
conclude that at least some meritless and insubstantial lawsuits
would go unfiled when prisoners find themselves required to
“shoulder the entire workload” of litigating their cases.
Walker, 257 F.3d at 669.
We need not tarry over Wilkins’s final contention: that
§ 1997e(d)(2) is not a reasonable way to conserve public funds.
Protection of the public fisc is a core responsibility of the
legislative branch. Indeed, as to federal expenditures, the
Supreme Court has affirmed Congress’s control of the purse
strings: “[The Appropriations Clause] is to assure that public
funds will be spent according to the letter of the difficult
judgments reached by Congress as to the common good and not
according to the individual favor of Government agents or the
individual pleas of litigants.” Office of Pers. Mgmt. v.
Richmond, 496 U.S. 414, 428 (1990). The extent to which
individual litigants should have their lawyers paid by the
people involves the setting of priorities sufficiently akin to
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the appropriations process that we are loath to interfere.
Wilkins sought over $92,000 in attorneys’ fees on a judgment of
$1. Congress was free to conclude that fee awards so
disproportionate to a monetary judgment are an unwise use of
public funds.
The Supreme Court has made clear that determining
attorneys’ fees awards “should not result in a second major
litigation.” Fox v. Vice, 131 S. Ct. 2205, 2216 (2011)
(internal quotation marks omitted). The simple, mathematical
formula embodied in § 1997e(d)(2) rationally forestalls
collateral fee litigation while ensuring that the incentive
provided by an attorneys’ fee award still attaches to the most
injurious civil rights violations.
Our ruling upholding the fee cap in § 1997e(d)(2) is
anything but novel. It is in accord with every other circuit to
consider this provision of the PLRA. See Parker, 581 F.3d at
200; Johnson, 339 F.3d at 583; Jackson, 331 F.3d at 792-93;
Foulk v. Charrier, 262 F.3d 687, 691 (8th Cir. 2001); Walker,
257 F.3d at 663; Boivin, 225 F.3d at 38. As noted in Shepard,
662 F.3d at 609, the “argument that [§ 1997e(d)(2) is
unconstitutional] has been uniformly rejected by the circuits in
which such issues have been raised.” We now join those courts
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and affirm the judgment of the district court upholding the
constitutionality of § 1997e(d)(2).
AFFIRMED
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