Doe v. United States Department of Veterans Affairs
- Laura Swain
- 1:25-cv-04423
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Doe v. United States Department of Veterans Affairs, Judge Swain denied Jane Doe’s request to appeal without paying fees.
Jane Doe’s ability to proceed without paying filing fees on appeal was affected. The court’s ruling did not decide the underlying claims against the named defendants.
What happened
In Doe v. United States Department of Veterans Affairs, Jane Doe asked to proceed without paying court fees for her appeal. The court had previously transferred her case to the District of Columbia.
Doe filed a document called an emergency motion, which the court understood as requesting permission to proceed without paying fees on appeal. The court relied on its earlier transfer order, which had found that an appeal would not be taken in good faith.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain denied Doe’s request to proceed without paying fees on appeal and directed the clerk to terminate the motion. The court also made the same certification about any appeal from this order.
The detailed version
- Doe v. United States Department of Veterans Affairs · No. 1:25-cv-04423
- Laura Swain
- July 16, 2025
Background
Jane Doe brought the action without a lawyer. In an earlier order, the court transferred the action to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Doe later filed a notice of appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and submitted a document titled “Emergency Motion to Stay Fee Enforcement and Preserve Appellate Rights Pending Supervisory Intervention and Ruling on IFP.”
Issue
The court treated Doe’s submission as a request to proceed without paying filing fees on appeal. The opinion does not decide the underlying claims against the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, Dr. Corinne Galgay, or Doug Collins.
Ruling
The court denied Doe’s request to proceed without paying fees on appeal. It relied on the reasons stated in the transfer order, including the certification under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that an appeal from that order would not be taken in good faith. The court also certified that any appeal from this order would not be taken in good faith, denied fee-free status for that appeal, and directed the clerk to terminate the motion.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.