The U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday rejected three pro se, indigent prisoners' bids to file petitions to the court without fees and permanently barred them from seeking fee waivers from the high court, decisions that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson called "foolish" in a passionate dissent.

In brief per curiam orders, the high court said the petitioners could no longer file in forma pauperis petitions in noncriminal matters because they had each "repeatedly abused this court's process."

Justice Jackson said petitioners to the high court typically must pay substantial costs and fees, and that the permanent bans on in forma pauperis petitions could make it impossible for indigent prisoners to raise new claims based on changes in law or challenging the conditions of their confinement.

"In my view, such a restriction foolishly trades a pound of values for an ounce of convenience," Justice Jackson wrote in her dissenting opinion from the ruling on the petition filed by Danny Howell, who is incarcerated in Indiana. "That is, the court now blocks indigent incarcerated individuals from ever more accessing our courthouse, just to avoid a minor administrative burden."

Justice Jackson's dissent argued against what she said was an expansive creep of the high court's bans on in forma pauperis filings from litigants since the practice began in 1989. Prisoners, she said, have been the most frequently affected.

In addition to Howell, the high court on Tuesday issued per curiam bans on two other incarcerated petitioners: David Diehl and Leihinahina Sullivan. Justice Jackson dissented from all three orders but issued a lengthy dissent only in Howell's.

Howell has filed several challenges to his Indiana state court convictions and 70-year sentence for felony child molestation and sexual misconduct with a minor.

Justice Jackson wrote that, over the past 22 years, more than half of the petitioners hit with this ban were prisoners, despite the fact that incarceration status was not an issue in the three cases that set the precedent for such bans: In re: McDonald in 1989, In re: Sindram in 1991 and Martin v. District of Columbia Court of Appeals in 1992.

In the early years, the in forma pauperis bans were controversial. Dissenting justices in McDonald worried that such bans would expand to effectively exclude people from the Supreme Court based on class.

"[The dissenters] also predicted that what started as a rare step would turn out to be 'merely the prelude' to a more habitual shutting of the courthouse doors," Justice Jackson wrote. "The dissenters were right. The court has steadily expanded the reach of Martin, transforming what was once an extraordinary measure into a routine order."

Justice Jackson said the court now uses Martin's case name as shorthand for the bans, as in the court is "Martinizing" another litigant.

Howell's case illustrated the court's expanding use of the bans, Justice Jackson wrote. Whereas the first three litigants hit with bans had each filed dozens of frivolous filings in rapid succession, Howell had only filed six petitions over 14 years that challenged aspects of his conviction.

"Howell's case is not an outlier," she wrote. "By my count, the court has now invoked Martin hundreds of times to prospectively bar indigent litigants from filing in forma pauperis. We no longer wait for a petitioner to inundate the court with frivolous filings. Instead, we reflexively Martinize petitioners after only a few petitions."

She said that when it comes to balancing prisoners' access to judicial review and reducing the court's administrative burden, "we should err on the side of keeping our courthouse doors open."

The cases are Danny Howell v. Circuit Court of Indiana et al., case number 25-5557, David Diehl v. United States, case number 25-6278, and Leihinahina Sullivan v. United States, case number 25-6100, in the Supreme Court of the United States.

--Editing by Dave Trumbore.