Valles v. Attorney General of the United States

Background

Andrew Valles filed this action without a lawyer. On March 18, 2025, the court received his complaint. The court initially dismissed it without prejudice under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g), which bars a prisoner with three or more qualifying prior actions from proceeding without paying the filing fee unless the prisoner shows an immediate danger of serious physical injury. The initial order stated that Valles had filed the complaint while he was still a prisoner and had not alleged facts showing imminent danger. Judgment was entered on March 19, 2025.

Valles then sought reconsideration and filed an appeal. The court treated the reconsideration request as a motion under Rule 59(e) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. A Rule 59(e) motion asks the court to change or amend a judgment based on controlling law or factual matters that the court previously overlooked. Because Valles filed the motion within the required 28-day period, the court concluded that his notice of appeal had not yet taken effect and that the district court could decide the motion.

Filing-date issue

The complaint stated that Valles was due to be released from Federal Bureau of Prisons custody on or before March 17, 2025, and that he would face an immediate danger of serious physical injury if required to comply with the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act. He signed the complaint on March 16 and listed a non-prison mailing address. In his reconsideration motion, however, he stated that he submitted the complaint in person on March 18, after he had stopped being a prisoner on March 17.

The court explained the prisoner-mailbox rule: when an incarcerated person files a document, the document is generally considered filed when the person gives it to prison officials for mailing. Courts in the circuit generally assume, absent contrary evidence, that a prisoner gave a document to prison officials on the date it was signed. The court concluded that Valles’s statement that he submitted the complaint in person after his release could establish that he was not a prisoner when he filed it. The court called this a potentially controlling factual matter that it had overlooked.

Ruling

The court granted Valles’s Rule 59(e) motion and vacated the order of dismissal under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g). It also directed the Clerk of Court to vacate the civil judgment and reopen the matter. The court said it would consider Valles’s motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction concerning compliance with registration requirements in a separate order.

The court certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that an appeal from this order would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to proceed without paying the filing fee for purposes of an appeal. The opinion also notes that Valles had previously raised the same or related arguments concerning the registration statute, but those cited matters were not the basis for the disposition of this reconsideration motion.