M. L. B. v. S. L. J., 519 U.S. 102, 12 (1996)

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Cite as: 519 U. S. 102 (1996)

Opinion of the Court

counsel at state expense, as delineated in our decisions, is less encompassing. A State must provide trial counsel for an indigent defendant charged with a felony, Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335, 339 (1963), but that right does not extend to nonfelony trials if no term of imprisonment is actually imposed, Scott v. Illinois, 440 U. S. 367, 373-374 (1979). A State's obligation to provide appellate counsel to poor defendants faced with incarceration applies to appeals of right. Douglas v. California, 372 U. S. 353, 357 (1963). In Ross v. Moffitt, however, we held that neither the Due Process Clause nor the Equal Protection Clause requires a State to provide counsel at state expense to an indigent prisoner pursuing a discretionary appeal in the state system or petitioning for review in this Court. 417 U. S., at 610, 612, 616-618.

III

We have also recognized a narrow category of civil cases in which the State must provide access to its judicial processes without regard to a party's ability to pay court fees. In Boddie v. Connecticut, 401 U. S. 371 (1971), we held that the State could not deny a divorce to a married couple based on their inability to pay approximately $60 in court costs. Crucial to our decision in Boddie was the fundamental interest at stake. "[G]iven the basic position of the marriage relationship in this society's hierarchy of values and the concomitant state monopolization of the means for legally dissolving this relationship," we said, due process "prohibit[s] a State from denying, solely because of inability to pay, access to its courts to individuals who seek judicial dissolution of their marriages." Id., at 374; see also Little v. Streater, 452 U. S. 1, 13-17 (1981) (State must pay for blood grouping tests sought by an indigent defendant to enable him to contest a paternity suit).

Soon after Boddie, in Lindsey v. Normet, 405 U. S. 56 (1972), the Court confronted a double-bond requirement imposed by Oregon law only on tenants seeking to appeal ad-

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