Prato v. Vallas
Justice Stevens, acting alone as the circuit justice for this case, denied a woman more time to pay the Supreme Court's filing fee after she was refused permission to file for free.
He explained that after reviewing her underlying appeal, he saw no chance the Court would agree to hear it, so there was no reason to let her keep trying to raise the money.
“Having reviewed petitioner's petition for a writ of certiorari, I am satisfied that there are no grounds upon which this Court would grant certiorari, and I therefore deny petitioner's request for an extension of time.”
Justice Stevens explains why he denied the petitioner more time to pay the filing fee.
How it got here: The Court had already denied the petitioner permission to file for free and set a deadline to pay fees; she asked for more time, which a single justice then denied.
The Case in Depth
What happened
A woman named Prato had sued officials including Vallas and lost in the lower courts. She asked the Supreme Court to hear her case for free, without paying the usual fees, because she said she could not afford them. The Court had earlier turned down that request and given her a deadline to pay the standard filing and printing costs instead.
The question before the Court
Could a Supreme Court justice refuse to give a woman more time to pay her filing fee after deciding her case had no chance of being heard?
Why it matters
This is a routine procedural order rather than a ruling on the merits, but it shows how a single justice can end a case at the fee stage. For the petitioner, it means her case is over unless she can pay immediately, since the Court found her appeal had no realistic chance of being granted.
What changes now
This order closes out the petitioner's attempt to have the Supreme Court review her case, since she was denied both free filing and extra time to pay the standard fee. Unless she can pay the docketing fee and submit a compliant petition immediately, her case ends here. The order includes no ruling on the merits of any legal question.
What this does not decide
This order does not resolve any legal question in the petitioner's underlying case against Vallas and other officials. It only addresses whether she could have more time to pay a filing fee, based on one justice's view that her appeal had no chance of being granted review.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- Justice Stevens, sitting as the circuit justice responsible for emergency requests from this part of the country, reviewed the petitioner's request for more time to pay the Court's filing fee.
- Under the Court's practice, a circuit justice may grant or deny short extensions for procedural deadlines like paying docketing fees, based on whether pursuing the case further is worthwhile.
- Because granting more time would only delay a case that had no realistic chance of being taken up, Stevens read through the underlying petition for a writ of certiorari to check whether it raised any issue the full Court would likely agree to review.
- Finding no such issue, he concluded that letting the petitioner keep raising money to pay the fee would serve no purpose, since the case would not be accepted even if she eventually paid.
- He therefore denied the request for an extension of time, ending the petitioner's opportunity to pursue the case further in the Supreme Court.