White v. Department of Corrections

Background

Robert White filed this action without a lawyer while held at the Otis Bantum Correctional Center. The complaint named White and 27 other prisoners as plaintiffs and alleged that they were forced to undergo mandatory or random strip searches at that facility on August 29, 2025. White was the only plaintiff who signed the complaint and the only plaintiff who filed a signed application to proceed without paying the filing fee and a prisoner authorization.

Reason for Severance

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 20 permits multiple plaintiffs to proceed together when their claims arise from the same event or related events and share a legal or factual question. Rule 21 allows a court to separate claims when doing so promotes fairness, efficiency, or judicial economy, even without finding that the plaintiffs were improperly joined.

The court concluded that managing this pro se, multi-prisoner case would not be fair or efficient. Each plaintiff representing himself could act only for himself, not for the other plaintiffs. Rule 11 also requires each unrepresented plaintiff to personally sign pleadings and other court papers. The court noted that prisoners could be released or transferred and might therefore be unable to sign later filings. The court also cited security limits on communication and concluded that limited opportunities to discuss strategy, share discovery, or exchange filings could cause piecemeal submissions, delays, and missed deadlines.

Order

The court severed all claims except White’s claims from the original action under Rule 21. White remained the sole plaintiff in the original case. The Clerk of Court was directed to open 27 separate civil actions, one for each other named plaintiff, and to file a copy of the original complaint and this order in each new action. The new cases were to proceed independently, although the court could later consider whether they were related or should be consolidated. The court directed the other plaintiffs to submit signed complaint signature pages and either pay the required fees or submit completed applications to proceed without paying those fees, along with prisoner authorizations.

The order did not decide whether the alleged searches violated the law. Judge Laura Taylor Swain also certified that an appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to proceed without paying fees for an appeal. The Clerk was directed to mail the order to each plaintiff at the address of record.