Hardman v. Birkholz

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Decided: December 12, 2025
• Docket: 23-3664
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS DEC 12 2025 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

PARLEY DREW HARDMAN, No. 23-3664 D.C. No. Petitioner - Appellant, 2:22-cv-07787-ADS v.

BRYAN BIRKHOLZ, Warden, MEMORANDUM* Respondent - Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California Autumn D. Spaeth, Magistrate Judge, Presiding

Submitted December 4, 2025** Pasadena, California

Before: CALLAHAN and KOH, Circuit Judges, and BARKER, District Judge.***

Petitioner Parley Hardman appeals from the district court’s final judgment

dismissing without prejudice his 28 U.S.C. § 2241 petition for a writ of habeas

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The panel previously ordered that this case be submitted on the briefs and record without oral argument. See Dkt. No. 71; Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2). *** The Honorable J. Campbell Barker, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Texas, sitting by designation. corpus. We conclude that the district court lacked jurisdiction over this petition and

thus have “jurisdiction on appeal . . . merely for the purpose of correcting the error

of the lower court in entertaining the suit.” Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Env’t,

523 U.S. 83, 95 (1998) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).

In 2004, Petitioner was convicted in the Middle District of Tennessee of

several crimes, the details of which are not relevant here. The judgment of conviction

imposed a fine of $17,500 payable “immediately” and further provided: “Should

there be an unpaid balance upon the commencement of the term of supervised

release, payments may be made in regular monthly installments” in a given amount.

The Sixth Circuit rejected Petitioner’s argument that the “immediately” aspect of the

fine in the written judgment is inconsistent with the sentencing judge’s oral

pronouncement that the fine “will be paid” in monthly installments upon release

from prison. United States v. Hardman, No. 17-06114, 2018 WL 11303418 (6th Cir.

July 31, 2018) (unpublished).

In 2022, Petitioner brought this habeas action in the Central District of

California, where he is confined. He alleged that the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is

requiring him to make payments toward his fine while in prison. Attachments to the

petition reference the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program. That program

requires federal inmates to commit a portion of their prison earnings or other

resources to the payment of fines or face specified consequences for

2 23-3664 nonparticipation. 28 C.F.R. § 545.11(a)(3), (b), (d).

The habeas petition presented two challenges to BOP’s requirement of fine

payments. First, Petitioner alleged that his conviction is invalid for several reasons,

such as falsified evidence and issues with his appointed counsel. Second, Petitioner

alleged that the sentencing court “erroneously imposed a conflicting sentence from

the [one] pronounced orally at the sentencing hearing,” in that the written judgment

made his fine payable immediately.

The district court granted the government’s motion to dismiss for a failure to

exhaust administrative remedies. The district court thus entered a final judgment

dismissing the case without prejudice.

We affirm the district court’s judgment, but we do so on the alternative ground

of a lack of statutory jurisdiction. See Hamilton v. Brown, 630 F.3d 889, 893 (9th

Cir. 2011) (“We may affirm the district court on any ground supported by the

record.”). A “federal court has leeway to choose among threshold grounds for

denying audience to a case on the merits.” Sinochem Int’l Co. v. Malaysia Int’l

Shipping Corp., 549 U.S. 422, 431 (2007) (internal quotation marks and citation

omitted). Although an exhaustion requirement can be one such ground, the

“statutory elements . . . of jurisdiction are an essential ingredient . . . restraining the

courts from acting at certain times.” Steel Co., 523 U.S. at 101; see also Heath v.

Cleary, 708 F.2d 1376, 1380 n.4 (9th Cir. 1983) (“dismissal of an action on the

3 23-3664 ground of failure to exhaust administrative remedies is not on the merits”).

The district court lacked statutory jurisdiction over the habeas petition here

because a challenge to the validity of a conviction or sentence must be brought under

28 U.S.C. § 2255 in the district of sentencing. 28 U.S.C. § 2255(e); Harrison v.

Ollison, 519 F.3d 952, 956, 958 (9th Cir. 2008). A habeas petition under 28 U.S.C.

§ 2241 is the correct vehicle to challenge BOP’s implementation of a sentence but

only when that challenge does not attack the validity of the sentence itself. Jones v.

Hendrix, 599 U.S. 465, 475 (2023) (explaining that Ҥ 2255(e) does not displace

§ 2241 when a prisoner challenges ‘the legality of his detention’ without attacking

the validity of his sentence”). Section 2255(e) denies jurisdiction over this habeas

petition because the petition does not allege that BOP is administering a lawful

sentence in an unlawful way. Rather, it alleges that BOP lacks authority to require

payments of the criminal fine because the district court wrongly convicted Petitioner

and wrongly imposed a fine payable immediately. That claim is not cognizable under

§ 2241.

Dismissal without prejudice is the appropriate consequence of the lack of

statutory jurisdiction here. Under 28 U.S.C. § 1631, we must consider whether “it is

in the interest of justice” to transfer this action to another court in which it could

have originally been brought. That decision allows us to consider the merits of the

appeal. See Rodriguez-Roman v. INS, 98 F.3d 416, 424 (9th Cir. 1996) (noting that

4 23-3664 a court lacking jurisdiction may “decline to transfer if the petition or appeal is

frivolous”); Clark v. Busey, 959 F.2d 808, 814 (9th Cir. 1992) (“Where no colorable

claim for relief has been shown, transfer is improper.”). Petitioner’s appeal

exclusively concerns financial penalties, and his claim that the sentencing court did

not validly require immediate payment does not justify transfer because the Sixth

Circuit has already considered and rejected that argument. Moreover, Petitioner’s

prior litigation in the Sixth Circuit negates the possibility that Petitioner lacks

knowledge of the proper forum for his current attempt to relitigate the same issue.

See Puri v. Gonzales, 464 F.3d 1038, 1043 (9th Cir. 2006) (“Thus, this case is unlike

the usual case in which we have found a transfer to be in the interest of justice

because the litigant was unaware of or confused about the proper forum in which to

file his action.”). We thus affirm the district court’s judgment dismissing the habeas

petition without prejudice. E.g., Moore v. Reno, 185 F.3d 1054, 1055 (9th Cir. 1999)

(per curiam) (holding, where § 2255(e) applied to deny jurisdiction over the habeas

petition, “the district court did not err by dismissing Moore’s § 2241 petition”).

AFFIRMED.1

1 In light of this disposition, any pending motion is denied as moot.

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