Folks v. Maria
- Colleen McMahon
- 1:19-cv-10220
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Folks v. Deputy María, Judge McMahon ordered a prisoner to pay filing fees or authorize installment withdrawals before the case could proceed.
Daquon Kadeem Folks, the facility holding him, and the Clerk of Court were affected: Folks had to pay the fees or submit the authorization, the facility could be directed to process installment deductions, and the Clerk had to carry out the stated docket and mailing instructions.
What happened
In Folks v. Deputy María, Daquon Kadeem Folks, who was held at the Otis Bantum Correctional Center, filed the action without a lawyer and submitted an application to proceed without paying fees upfront.
The court ordered Folks, within 30 days, either to pay $400 in fees or submit a signed authorization allowing $350 to be deducted from his prison account in installments. The court said no summons would issue yet and warned that failure to comply would result in dismissal of the action.
Judge Colleen McMahon also certified that an appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to appeal without paying fees. The order did not decide the underlying claims.
The detailed version
- Folks v. Maria · No. 1:19-cv-10220
- Colleen McMahon
- Dec. 2, 2019
Background
Daquon Kadeem Folks filed this civil action without a lawyer while held at the Otis Bantum Correctional Center on Rikers Island. He submitted an application to proceed without prepaying the filing fees, commonly called an application to proceed in forma pauperis or “IFP,” but he did not submit the required prisoner authorization.
Requirements to proceed
The court explained that a prisoner must either pay $400 in fees—a $350 filing fee and a $50 administrative fee—or submit a signed prisoner authorization. If the court grants the IFP application, the authorization permits the facility to deduct the $350 filing fee from the prisoner’s trust account in installments and requires certified copies of the prisoner’s account statements for the previous six months to be sent to the court. The $50 administrative fee does not apply to a person granted IFP status.
The court gave Folks 30 days from the date of the order to pay the $400 or complete and submit the attached prisoner authorization, labeled with docket number 19-CV-10220 (CM). The Clerk of Court was directed to assign the matter to Judge McMahon’s docket, mail the order to Folks, and record service on the docket. No summons was to issue at that time. The court stated that, if Folks complied, the case would be processed under the Clerk’s Office procedures; if he did not comply within the allowed time, the action would be dismissed.
Ruling and other directions
Judge Colleen McMahon issued an order directing prisoner authorization and did not reach the merits of Folks’s underlying claims. The court certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that an appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith and denied IFP status for purposes of an appeal. The court also cautioned that certain future dismissals of a prisoner’s federal civil actions could count as “strikes” under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g), potentially limiting the prisoner’s ability to proceed IFP in later cases.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.