UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

┐ HORACE W. CRUMP, JR., │ Plaintiff-Appellant, │ │ v. > No. 24-1126 │ │ JANE BLUE, LCF Nurse, NATHAN MIKEL, LCF Health │ Unit Manager (HUM), TIMOTHY SHAW, LCF Resident │ Unit Manager (RUM), and SUZANNE E. GROFF, LCF │ Nurse Practitioner (NP), in their personal capacities, │ Defendants-Appellees. │ ┘

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan at Grand Rapids. No. 1:23-cv-01353—Sally Berens, Magistrate Judge.

Argued: October 29, 2024

Decided and Filed: November 15, 2024

Before: SUTTON, Chief Judge; READLER and BLOOMEKATZ, Circuit Judges. _________________

COUNSEL ARGUED: Logan L. Page, WILKINSON STEKLOFF LLP, Washington, D.C., for Appellant. ON BRIEF: Logan L. Page, Dhruti Patel, WILKINSON STEKLOFF LLP, Washington, D.C., for Appellant.

SUTTON, C.J., delivered the opinion of the court in which READLER and BLOOMEKATZ, JJ., joined. READLER, J. (pp. 10–12), delivered a separate concurring opinion. No. 24-1126 Crump v. Blue, et al. Page 2

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OPINION _________________

SUTTON, Chief Judge. While incarcerated at the Lakeland Correctional Facility in Michigan, Horace Crump filed this § 1983 action against several prison employees, alleging that they withheld treatment for his multiple sclerosis. At stake at this stage in the case is not whether the prison employees withheld this medical treatment; it is whether Crump’s lawsuit may go forward before he pays the required filing fee. The district court held that it could not. We vacate and remand.

I.

Anyone who files a lawsuit in federal court presumptively must pay a filing fee. See 28 U.S.C. § 1914(a). And anyone who cannot pay the fee may ask to proceed “in forma pauperis,” a status that allows the litigant to pay the fee over time or sometimes not at all. See id. § 1915(a)–(b). Under the Prison Litigation Reform Act, prisoners may lose this privilege. They must pay the fee upfront if courts have dismissed three or more of their prior “action[s] or appeal[s]” as “frivolous, malicious, or [for] fail[ing] to state a claim.” Id. § 1915(g). Prisoners “under imminent danger of serious physical injury” are exempt from this three-strikes rule. Id.

When Crump filed his lawsuit, he did not pay his filing fee and instead sought leave to proceed in forma pauperis. The district court held that the Act’s three-strikes rule disqualified him from obtaining relief under this exception and dismissed his complaint. Crump appeals, disputing two of the three strikes.

II.

To bring the issue into view, it helps to describe Crump’s prior cases at the outset. In one of them, the district court dismissed Crump’s federal claims for failure to state a claim and declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over his state-law claims. Crump v. Patrick et al., No. 1:11-cv-15 (W.D. M