The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to review a pro se lawsuit brought by a man incarcerated in Florida against a nurse he accused of denying him medical care, leaving intact lower court rulings that dismissed his action as "malicious" and were later affirmed on separate grounds.

James E. McNair, who is serving a life sentence for a 2008 armed robbery, filed a petition of certiorari on Jan. 6 asking the justices to review an Eleventh Circuit ruling that upheld the dismissal of his lawsuit, which he filed in November 2023 from Gulf Correctional Institution in Wewahitchka, Florida, where he's currently held.

In the complaint, McNair accused Kim Johnson, a nurse practitioner at Liberty Correctional Institution, where McNair was incarcerated previously, of discontinuing a prescription of the drug prednisone — which he took for years to alleviate a persistent cough caused by a disease called sarcoidosis affecting his lungs.

McNair took the medication since he was diagnosed with the condition in 2015 until October 2020, when Johnson discontinued the prescription. In the months that followed, McNair experienced uncontrolled cough, shortness of breath and low oxygen saturation that made it hard for him to walk and eat, according to his complaint.

McNair's condition deteriorated to the point that physicians observed signs of heart disease and were concerned he was at risk of needing permanent oxygen. He was hospitalized several times, and each time he was prescribed prednisone. But Johnson kept discontinuing the medication and refused to prescribe it, McNair's certiorari petition says.

McNair sought $300,000 in compensatory damages plus $150,000 in punitive damages against Johnson, alleging deliberate indifference to his medical needs in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

Like many other lawsuits filed by prisoners, McNair's faced procedural obstacles mandated by the Prison Litigation Reform Act, or PLRA, which compels federal courts to screen complaints and dismiss any suit that is frivolous, malicious or unsupported by facts.

In the case of indigent prisoners who like McNair seek to file a complaint without paying a $405 filing fee, a process known as "in forma pauperis," courts are required to determine whether a prisoner has incurred "three strikes" — meaning they have already filed at least three lawsuits that the courts have deemed frivolous or malicious.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Martin Fitzpatrick reviewed McNair's lawsuit, which included a standardized "Civil Rights Complaint Form for Pro Se Litigant," wherein filers must disclose all their prior litigation in both state and federal courts. The judge found McNair listed six cases but omitted a habeas corpus petition filed in 2010 and an appeal in a different habeas case.

Judge Fitzpatrick recommended dismissal after finding McNair's omission rendered the suit "malicious" under the PLRA and constituted an abuse of the judicial process.

"An appropriate sanction for plaintiff's abuse of the judicial process in not providing the court with true factual statements or responses is dismissal without prejudice," Judge Fitzpatrick wrote in his report. "[I]f word spread around the prisons that the questions on the complaint form could be circumvented in such a manner, the court might be confronted with widespread abuse from its many prisoner litigants."

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida later adopted his recommendation and tossed the suit.

On appeal before the Eleventh Circuit, McNair said the cases he failed to list did not count as strikes under the PLRA, and thus the omission was immaterial to the "three-strike" determination and, he argued, unintentional.

In a March 2024 brief asking the Eleventh Circuit to reinstate McNair's complaint, attorneys with Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP said he was simply "confused" by the requirements of the form, which included only six spots to list litigation history.

The questionnaire also included a note saying: "Attach additional pages as necessary to list all cases."

"The immateriality, and technicality, of the omissions here makes clear that Mr. McNair was not trying to conceal prior strikes, as his omitted cases could not count as strikes. He had no reason to lie to the court about his prior litigation history," the brief says. "Without materiality and that intent to deceive, Mr. McNair's omissions cannot justify dismissal as malicious under the PLRA."

Johnson and the state of Florida argued in a reply brief that the district court could dismiss McNair's lawsuit outside of the PLRA framework by simply asserting its "inherent authority" to shut down litigation under local court rules — in this case, as a sanction for McNair's failure to disclose his full litigation history in the standard inmate complaint form.

In July 2025, a three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit embraced that argument.

"McNair insists that his failure to disclose two prior cases in the litigation history section of a standardized prisoner complaint form didn't render his action 'malicious' within the meaning of the PLRA's operative provisions," U.S. Circuit Judge Kevin C. Newsom wrote for the panel. "Even if McNair is right about that, we affirm the district court's decision on the ground that it had the inherent authority to manage its docket and sanction McNair's violation of court rules by dismissing his suit without prejudice."

In his attempt to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to take his case, McNair told the justices of a "longstanding, entrenched and widely recognized" circuit split on whether a federal district court has the power to impose inherent authority sanctions without first finding "bad faith" by a prisoner plaintiff — conduct defined as intentional, willful or undertaken to abuse the judicial process.

The Fifth, Seventh, D.C. and Second circuits all require a bad faith finding. The First, Eighth and Eleventh circuits, on the other hand, don't impose such a requirement. The Third, Ninth and Sixth circuits have cases falling in both camps, according to the certiorari petition.

Arnold & Porter attorneys warned that the split entails "severe consequences" to prisoners seeking to file lawsuits, with filing errors, misunderstanding of local rules and negligent omission resulting in different outcomes depending on geography.

"Every missed deadline, clerical error or misunderstanding of a court-mandated form is negligent in some sense," the petition says. "If negligence suffices to justify inherent authority sanctions, there is no administrable boundary on judicial discretion."

Counsel for McNair and Johnson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

McNair is represented by Andrew T. Tutt, R. Stanton Jones, Katie Weng, Nicole Masiello and Claire Fahlman of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP.

Johnson is represented by Michael J. Bentley, R. Sumner Fortenberry and Jacob B. Hanson of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP.

The case is McNair v. Johnson, case number 25-808, in the Supreme Court of the United States.

--Editing by Philip Shea.