White v. Department of Corrections

Background

Robert White filed this action without a lawyer while held at the Otis Bantum Correctional Center on Rikers Island. The complaint alleged that White and 27 other prisoners were forced to undergo unacceptable mandatory, random, or orchestrated specialized strip searches during an incident allegedly occurring on August 29, 2025. Although the complaint listed all 28 prisoners as plaintiffs, only White signed it. White was also the only prisoner who submitted a signed application to proceed without paying the filing fee and a prisoner authorization; the court had granted White that status.

Rules and analysis

Rule 20 allows multiple plaintiffs to join one lawsuit when their claims arise from the same transaction, occurrence, or series of occurrences and share a common legal or factual question. Rule 21 gives a court authority to separate claims even without finding that joinder was improper. Courts may consider judicial efficiency, possible prejudice, and whether the claims involve different witnesses and evidence.

The court concluded that the practical difficulties of managing a lawsuit involving multiple unrepresented prisoners supported separation. Each prisoner could appear only for himself or herself, so White could not represent the other 27 prisoners. Each unrepresented plaintiff would also have to personally sign every filing. Because prisoners could be released or transferred from the detention facility, some might be unable to sign future documents. The court also cited security-related limits on correspondence and in-person communication, which could lead to piecemeal filings, delays, and missed deadlines.

Order

The court severed all claims of the 27 plaintiffs other than Robert White under Rule 21. White will proceed as the sole plaintiff in the original action. The clerk must open a separate civil action, with a new docket number, for each of the other 27 plaintiffs and file a copy of the complaint and this order in each new case. The new cases will proceed independently unless the court later orders otherwise. The other plaintiffs will be directed to submit signed complaint signature pages and either pay the required fees or submit completed applications to proceed without paying those fees and prisoner authorizations.

The order did not decide whether the new cases should be treated as related or consolidated, and it did not decide the merits of the alleged strip-search claims. The court also certified that an appeal from this order would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to proceed without paying fees for purposes of an appeal.