Opinion
22-2475
04-14-2023
ROBERT K. DECKER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. FEDERAL BUREAU OF PRISONS, Defendant-Appellee.
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
Submitted April 13, 2023 [*]
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, Terre Haute Division. No. 2:21-cv-00253-JpH-MJD James patrick Hanlon, Judge.
Before FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge THOMAS L. KIRSCH II, Circuit Judge
ORDER
Robert Decker, a federal prisoner, challenges the denials of his motions to amend his complaint seeking monetary and injunctive relief related to his placement in the Communications Management Unit at his prison. The district court denied the motions, concluding that Decker improperly sought to join an unrelated claim against the United States in the suit. We affirm.
In his original complaint, Decker sued various prison officials regarding the Communications Management Unit at Federal Correctional Institution, Terre Haute. The Communications Management Unit is a self-contained housing area where inmates are socially isolated and denied access to some prison programing. Inmates' visits, mail, and phone calls are also subjected to more scrutiny. See 28 C.F.R. § 540.200. Decker alleged that the lack of a periodic review of his placement in the unit violated his due process rights; that the creation of the Communications Management Unit-without comment or notice-violated the Administrative Procedures Act; and that a Federal Bureau of Prisons employee denied him access to the courts by refusing to allow the notarization of documents he needed for his state-court proceedings.
The district court screened Decker's complaint, see 28 U.S.C. § 1915A(a), dismissed most claims, but allowed him to proceed on his due process and APA claims. The court also allowed him to join the Federal Bureau of Prisons as a defendant.
Decker sought leave to amend his complaint to add a claim against the United States for failing to provide access to state-law resources. The court denied Decker's motion to amend. The court acknowledged that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 18(a) allows a plaintiff to combine unrelated claims against a single party, but Decker's proposed damages claim against the United States did not relate to his injunctive relief claims in his original complaint against the Bureau of Prisons. Such unrelated claims, the court explained, belonged in a separate lawsuit, for which a separate filing fee would have to be paid.
Decker moved to reconsider the denial of his motion to amend. He asked the court to dismiss his APA claim as moot (because he was awaiting transfer out of the Communications Management Unit) and allow him to proceed instead on his access-to-courts claim against the United States. The court dismissed the APA claim, reaffirmed its denial of Decker's motion to amend his complaint, and ordered him to show cause why the suit should not be dismissed as moot in light of his pending transfer from the unit.
Decker did not respond to the show-cause order and instead filed another motion for leave to amend to add an access-to-courts claim against the United States. The court denied that motion and dismissed Decker's remaining claim as moot.
Three months later, after his transfer to another prison's Communications Management Unit, Decker moved to reinstate his APA claim. Because Decker's appeal by this time was pending, the court denied the motion for lack of jurisdiction.
On appeal, Decker challenges the denial of his motions to amend and have the United States joined as a party. He argues that his proposed access-to-courts damages claim against the United States involved the same allegations he had made in his original complaint.
The court correctly denied Decker leave to amend his complaint. Even if Decker had made allegations in his original complaint regarding an access-to-courts damages claim against the United States, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 20 would preclude adding such a claim to a suit seeking injunctive relief against the Bureau of Prisons under the APA and the due process clause. A plaintiff may join multiple defendants only when the claims arise from the same set of events and share a common question of law or fact. Mitchell v. Kallas, 895 F.3d 492, 502-03 (7th Cir. 2018) (citing FED. R. CIV. P. 20(a)(2)(A)). Multiple claims against a single defendant are allowable, but "Claim A against Defendant 1 should not be joined with unrelated Claim B against Defendant 2." George v. Smith, 507 F.3d 605, 607 (7th Cir. 2007). The United States is a separate party from the Bureau of Prisons. The court here acted well within its discretion by refusing to let Decker join unrelated claims against different defendants.
Finally, with regard to the denial of his motion to reinstate his APA claim for injunctive relief, Decker says that his case now presents a live controversy because he has since been transferred to a Communications Management Unit at another prison. But we cannot review this argument on appeal. Because he filed the motion more than 28 days after judgment, the court properly considered it under Rule 60(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Word Seed Church v. Village of Homewood, 43 F.4th 688, 690 (7th Cir. 2022), and he did not file-as he must-a separate notice of appeal from the denial of that motion. United States v. Bonk, 967 F.3d 643, 649-50 (7th Cir. 2020); Smith v. Barry, 502 U.S. 244, 248 (1992).
AFFIRMED
[*] We have agreed to decide the case without oral argument because the briefs and record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would not significantly aid the court. FED. R. APP. p. 34(a)(2)(C).