Liu v. Marcus Garvey Village
- Laura Swain
- 1:25-cv-10135
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Lezhen Liu v. Marcus Garvey Village, Judge Swain ordered Liu to pay $405 or submit a signed fee-waiver application within 30 days.
Lezhen Liu must either pay the $405 in required fees or submit a completed and signed application to proceed without prepaying them within 30 days. The case will be dismissed if Liu does not comply, and no summons will issue yet.
What happened
In Lezhen Liu, aka Jennifer Liu v. Marcus Garvey Village, Lezhen Liu filed the case without paying the required fees or submitting an application to proceed without paying them in advance.
The court ordered Liu, within 30 days, to pay $405 or submit a completed and signed application to proceed without prepaying the fees. The court said no summons would issue yet and warned that the action would be dismissed if Liu did not comply.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain also certified that an appeal from this order would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to appeal without prepaying fees. The order did not decide the underlying claims.
The detailed version
- Liu v. Marcus Garvey Village · No. 1:25-cv-10135
- Laura Swain
- July 20, 2026
Background
Lezhen Liu brought the action without a lawyer. Liu submitted the complaint without either paying the required fees or submitting an application to proceed without prepaying them.
Order
The court explained that starting a civil action requires payment of $405: a $350 filing fee and a $55 administrative fee. Instead of paying, Liu could request permission to proceed without prepaying the fees by submitting a fully completed and signed application under 28 U.S.C. § 1915. The court gave Liu 30 days from the date of the order to choose one of those options and instructed Liu to include docket number 25-CV-10135 (LTS) on the application.
No summons would issue at that time. If Liu complied, the Clerk’s Office would process the case under its procedures. If Liu did not comply within the allowed time, the action would be dismissed.
Appeal and Disposition
The court certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that an appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith. It therefore denied permission to proceed without prepaying fees for an appeal. The order addressed payment of fees and the application to proceed without prepayment; it did not decide the merits of Liu’s claims.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.