Sonny Austin Ramdeo v. D. Tyler, Federal Bureau of Prisons Residential Reentry Manager, Orlando, Florida

Under 28 U.S.C. § 1915 and this Court’s decisions in Coppedge v. United States, 369 U.S. 438 (1962), and Gaea v. United States, 411 U.S. 618 (1973), an indigent appellant may be denied leave to proceed in forma pauperis only if the appeal is “frivolous,” meaning it lacks any arguable basis in law or fact. In this case, the court of appeals denied petitioner in forma pauperis status as “frivolous” while expressly stating that it “has not considered” the underlying statutory question, namely, whether the Bureau of Prisons must apply earned-time credits under 18 U.S.C. § 3624(a) to a sentence commuted “to expire(s) on [a certain date]” in a presidential clemency order that preserves the Bureau’s authority over confinement. The court then dismissed the appeal for failure to pay the filing and docketing fees and, through clerk-issued deficiency notices invoking a local “successive reconsideration” rule, refused to allow any judge or panel to consider petitioner’s timely petitions for panel rehearing under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 40. The questions presented are: Whether a court of appeals may deny leave to proceed in forma pauperis as “frivolous” when the appeal turns on a federal statutory question the court expressly acknowledges it has not previously decided. Whether a court of appeals (or its clerk’s office) may treat a timely petition for rehearing under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 40 as an impermissible successive “motion for reconsideration” under a local rule governing motions for reconsideration, thereby declining to process