Cite as: 518 U. S. 343 (1996)
Thomas, J., concurring
and just that convictions be susceptible to review by an appellate court, it cannot by force of its exactions draw a line which precludes convicted indigent persons . . . from securing such a review . . . ." Id., at 23 (opinion concurring in judgment). Thus, contrary to the characterization in Bounds, Griffin stands not for the proposition that all inmates are entitled to adequate appellate review of their criminal convictions, but for the more modest rule that, if the State chooses to afford appellate review, it "can no more discriminate on account of poverty than on account of religion, race, or color." Griffin, supra, at 17 (plurality opinion).2
If we left any doubt as to the basis of our decision in Griffin, we eliminated it two decades later in Douglas v. California, 372 U. S. 353 (1963), where we held for the first time that States must provide assistance of counsel on a first appeal as of right for all indigent defendants. Like Griffin, Douglas turned not on a right of access per se, but rather on the right not to be denied, on the basis of poverty, access afforded to others. We did not say in Douglas that indigents have a right to a "meaningful appeal" that could not be realized absent appointed counsel. Cf. Bounds, 430 U. S., at 823.
2 This is what Justice Brennan came to call the "Griffin equality principle," United States v. MacCollom, 426 U. S. 317, 331 (1976) (dissenting opinion), and it provided the rationale for a string of decisions that struck down a variety of state transcript and filing fees as applied to indigent prisoners. Bounds cited a number of these cases in support of the right to "adequate, effective and meaningful" access to the courts. See 430 U. S., at 822, and n. 8. But none of the transcript and fee cases on which Bounds relied were premised on a substantive standard of court access. Rather, like Griffin, these cases were primarily concerned with invidious discrimination on the basis of wealth. See, e. g., Smith v. Bennett, 365 U. S. 708, 709 (1961) ("[T]o interpose any financial consideration between an indigent prisoner of the State and his exercise of a state right to sue for his liberty is to deny that prisoner the equal protection of the laws"); Gardner v. California, 393 U. S. 367, 370-371 (1969) ("[I]n the context of California's habeas corpus procedure denial of a transcript to an indigent marks the same invidious discrimination which we held impermissible in . . . Griffin").
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