Willie Holder v. Louis S. Nelson

Appellants, plaintiffs below who are former and present inmates of California’s state prison system, commenced this civil rights class action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and 28 U.S.C. § 1343 , seeking to enjoin as unconstitutional the operation of several state statutes involving the deposit into the so-called Inmates’ Welfare Fund (the Fund) of earnings derived from inmate-owned and inmate-produced properties. The district court dismissed the action under F.R.Civ.P. 12(b), failing to specify whether the dismissal was for lack of subject matter jurisdiction (Rule 12(b)(1)) or for failure to state a federal claim (Rule 12(b)(6)), and denied plaintiffs’ request to empanel a three-judge district court under 28 U.S.C. § 2281 . We reverse.

Briefly, the allegations in the complaint are to the effect that defendants (1) deprived plaintiffs of their property in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment by depositing into the Fund interest earned on inmates’ savings accounts held in trust under Cal.Penal Code § 5008; (2) violated plaintiffs’ Four teenth Amendment rights by depositing into the Fund a portion of the proceeds from public sales of their paintings and handicrafts under…