Aaron Ellis, Vincent Spinner, Dwayne Young, and one other prisoner jointly filed a lawsuit pro se – meaning the represented themselves – each raising the same straightforward claim about the Internal Revenue Service’s withholding of COVID-19 stimulus payments from prisoners.
Instead of allowing any specific inquiry into whether these plaintiffs should be allowed to proceed jointly with their identical claims, the district court severed Mr. Ellis, Mr. Spinner, and Mr. Young from the original action and dismissed their claims based on the court’s mistaken view that prisoners are categorically barred from joining in one lawsuit together under the PLRA.
The MacArthur Justice Center is representing Mr. Ellis, Mr. Spinner, and Mr. Young on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, arguing that the U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that lower courts should not read the PLRA as disrupting the usual operation of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure without an explicit directive from Congress to do so.
Relevant to this case, Federal Rule 20 says that multiple “persons” may join as plaintiffs in one action, so long as they satisfy two easy-to-meet requirements. And because the PLRA does not say anything at all about joinder, the three plaintiffs should be allowed to proceed in one lawsuit together because they have satisfied the prerequisites for joinder laid out by Federal Rule 20.
In a published decision, the Fourth Circuit ruled in favor of Mr. Ellis, Mr. Spinner, and Mr. Young, holding that the district court erred in severing their lawsuit into multiple separate lawsuits. The Fourth Circuit held that the district court relied on PLRA provisions that did not apply in this case, and also held that “abstract observations” about incarcerated persons’ practical ability to litigate jointly cannot support a severance order under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.