Bonilla v. Chhabria

Background

Steven Wayne Bonilla, identified as a state prisoner, filed multiple civil-rights complaints under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 without a lawyer. The complaints named various federal and state court judges as defendants. The court said the complaints presented very similar claims seeking relief related to Bonilla’s underlying conviction and the handling of his self-filed habeas petitions and other cases.

The opinion also states that Bonilla had a pending federal habeas petition in the same court with appointed counsel and was represented by counsel in state-court habeas proceedings.

Filing-fee ruling

The court addressed Bonilla’s ability to proceed without paying the filing fee. Under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g), a prisoner who has accumulated qualifying prior dismissals generally cannot proceed without paying the fee unless the complaint shows that the prisoner faced an imminent danger of serious physical injury when the complaint was filed. The court stated that Bonilla had already been disqualified from proceeding without paying under that provision.

The court found that the allegations did not show imminent danger at the time of filing. It therefore ruled that Bonilla could not proceed without paying the filing fee.

Additional grounds for dismissal

The court further stated that, even if an application to proceed without paying the filing fee were granted, the lawsuits would be barred under the principles identified in Heck v. Humphrey, Younger v. Harris, Demos v. U.S. District Court, or Mullis v. U.S. Bankruptcy Court. The opinion did not provide a separate claim-by-claim explanation of which doctrine applied to which complaint.

Disposition

The court dismissed the cases with prejudice. It directed the clerk to terminate all pending motions and close the cases. It also directed the clerk to return, without filing, any further documents Bonilla submitted in the closed cases.

The opinion separately addressed the fact that Bonilla named the undersigned judge as a defendant in one case. It stated that the complaint made no specific allegations against that judge and concluded that the repetitive and frivolous nature of the filings did not provide a reason to question the judge’s impartiality.

Classification

This is a procedural order because the court dismissed the cases on filing-fee and other threshold grounds without deciding the underlying civil-rights claims on their merits.