Immigration – Appellate Filling Fee

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Fadeel Shuhaiber v. Illinois Department of Corrections

Case No.: 19-3244

Officials: HAMILTON, BRENNAN, and SCUDDER, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Immigration – Appellate Filling Fee

Fadeel Shuhaiber is confined to a wheelchair. Following the district court’s dismissal of claims he brought against the Illinois Department of Corrections under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Rehabilitation Act, Shuhaiber appealed and, based on his impoverished status, sought permission to proceed on appeal without prepaying the requisite filing fee. By the time he filed the appeal, Shuhaiber, a native of the United Arab Emirates, had been transferred to the custody of the Department of Homeland Security for removal from the United States. The change in custody matters because Shuhaiber, as a frequent filer of federal lawsuits, had accumulated more than three strikes under the Prison Litigation Reform Act for filing frivolous lawsuits, and therefore would have had to prepay the filing fee to appeal the district court’s dismissal of his claims. Doubting that Shuhaiber was still a “prisoner,” the district court granted his motion to proceed in forma pauperis.

We agree and hold, in alignment with all other circuits to have addressed the question, that the appellate filing-fee bar does not apply where, as here, the appellant is being held by immigration authorities and thus no longer is a “prisoner” within the meaning of the PLRA. That conclusion does not lead very far for Shuhaiber, however, as the district court was also right to dismiss his claims, leaving us to affirm.

Affirmed

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Derek A Hawkins is Associate Corporate Counsel, IP at Amazon.