Roberts v. The United States District Court of the Southern District of New York
- Laura Swain
- 1:22-cv-00127
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 5
In Roberts v. The United States District Court, Judge Swain dismissed Roberts’s complaint against the court and clerk for failing to state a claim.
Jazmine I. Roberts’s complaint was dismissed against the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and Mr. Hernandez. Roberts was directed to contact the Second Circuit about her pending appeal, and her permission to proceed without paying fees for an appeal from this order was denied.
What happened
Jazmine I. Roberts filed this case without a lawyer, seeking information about her pending appeal in the Second Circuit under docket number 21-2583. A district-court clerk could not find that appeal because the number was assigned by the appeals court, not the district court.
The court dismissed Roberts’s complaint against the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and Mr. Hernandez. It found that the court was protected from the claimed monetary relief and that the allegations did not show that the clerk violated federal law. The court also declined to allow an amended complaint.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain directed Roberts to contact the Second Circuit about her appeal. Judge Swain also denied her permission to proceed without paying fees for any appeal from this order, finding that an appeal would not be taken in good faith.
The detailed version
- Roberts v. The United States District Court of the Southern District of New York · No. 1:22-cv-00127
- Laura Swain
- Jan. 10, 2022
Background
Jazmine I. Roberts, appearing without a lawyer, filed this action after asking a clerk in the Pro Se Intake Unit for information about docket number 21-2583. That number was assigned by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to Roberts’s pending appeal from an earlier related proceeding. The district-court clerk could not locate a district-court case involving Roberts under that number because the only district-court action with that number was a different case.
Roberts alleged a violation of her right to check the status of her civil complaint or obtain a copy of the docket. She sued the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and its clerk, identified as “Mr. Hernandez.”
Court’s analysis
Because Roberts was allowed to proceed without paying filing fees, the court was required to screen her complaint under 28 U.S.C. § 1915. The court explained that it must dismiss such a complaint if it is frivolous, fails to state a claim, seeks money from a defendant protected from that relief, or is within the court’s subject-matter jurisdiction. The court also applied the rule that a complaint must contain enough facts to make a legal claim plausible.
The court concluded that Roberts’s allegations did not state a claim against either defendant. It held that Roberts did not identify a federal statute waiving the district court’s sovereign immunity from a claim for money damages. It also found that the allegations did not show that the clerk violated Roberts’s rights under federal law. The court therefore dismissed the claims under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B)(ii) and (iii).
Disposition
The court dismissed the complaint. It declined to allow Roberts to amend because it concluded that the defects could not be corrected by amendment. The court directed Roberts to contact the Second Circuit, rather than the district court, for information about her pending appeal under docket number 21-2583. It certified that any appeal from this order would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to proceed without paying fees for purposes of an appeal. The opinion does not state that the dismissal was with or without prejudice.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.