Arthur J. Lomax, Petitioner v. Christina Ortiz-Marquez

Summary

The Supreme Court held that under the Prison Litigation Reform Act's three-strikes provision, 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g), a prisoner accrues a strike whenever a prior federal civil action was dismissed for failure to state a claim, regardless of whether the dismissal was entered with or without prejudice. Reading the provision as limited to with-prejudice dismissals, the Court reasoned, would require inserting words Congress omitted and would make the identical dismissal phrase bear different meanings in neighboring PLRA provisions that undisputedly permit without-prejudice dismissal. Rule 41(b)'s default treatment of an unspecified dismissal as 'on the merits' presupposes, rather than creates, the phrase's indifference to prejudicial effect, and harmonizing the failure-to-state-a-claim ground with 'frivolous' and 'malicious' would defeat Congress's deliberate expansion of IFP restrictions beyond abusive suits to merely meritless ones. The Tenth Circuit's judgment, which had upheld the denial of petitioner Lomax's in forma pauperis motion, was affirmed.