A civil rights action was filed in DC District Court following the denial of proof of citizenship by the U.S. Embassy in Manila. At an interview in October 2022, Embassy staff repeatedly asked whether the appointment was for a Consular Report of Birth Abroad application and inquired about the whereabouts of a child, notwithstanding that the appointment was scheduled for an adult derivative passport application. Staff demanded documentation including parents' stamped passports of entry and ultrasounds of the applicant, then forty-three years of age. Court documents establishing the parents' common-law marriage were presented to the intake clerk at the time of the interview.

The denial was communicated by telephone, during which a second male voice was audible advising the consular officer. Written denials followed by email and lettermail, each refusing to recognize the applicant's United States citizenship on the ground that he had not been legitimated by his father. One year after the Embassy interview and days before the Defendants' response was due in District Court, the Department of State submitted a passport record to the Court as proof of the Plaintiff's citizenship. The Defendant moved immediately for dismissal on mootness grounds. Responsive submissions referred to the Plaintiff as a criminal with a psychiatric condition. These statements were uncontested on the facts and formed the basis of a subsequent civil action. The Plaintiff abandoned the injunctive claim in a partial summary judgment motion and proceeded on damages only. Judge Carl J. Nichols, nominated to the federal bench by President Donald Trump in 2019 and a former member of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, granted the Defendant's motion to dismiss for lacking cause of action.

The District Court judgment in No. 23-00216 was affirmed by the DC Circuit by summary affirmance without substantive analysis. The Petitioner's subsequent certiorari petition was rejected by the United States Supreme Court without acknowledgment or consideration. The Petitioner contested this disposition as a denial of due process in a separate proceeding (No. 26-17, below). The SC petition included in 26-17 exhibits was entered into the Court's docket six months after its initial submission and was immediately dismissed.

This action alleged that the Supreme Court's handling of the prior certiorari petition constituted a denial of due process. The case was dismissed for lacking a cause of action. Court Clerk Scott Harris was granted judicial immunity for disposing of certiorari petitions without acknowledging receipt and before the matter was placed before the Court for substantive consideration. No consideration was given to compensating the Petitioner for the destruction of court filings beyond the immunity granted to the Clerk.

The defamatory statements documented in the Embassy action remained uncontested. DOJ lawyer Sergio Sakarny did not file an answer to the Superior Court complaint. The matter was moved to District Court under a Westfall certification renaming the defendant as the United States of America. This transfer was executed by DOJ lawyers without prior notification or consent from the Plaintiff, and the case was immediately moved for dismissal on the ground that defamation claims are excluded from coverage under the Federal Tort Claims Act.

The dismissal was issued contrary to 28 U.S. Code section 1447(c), which requires remand to the court of original jurisdiction in federal cases lacking jurisdiction where the underlying issues remain undisputed. The resulting order by Judge Nichols is considered void for exercising jurisdiction to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction when the proper judicial response was remand or declination. The order extending immunity to DOJ lawyers expanded Westfall Act coverage to indemnify government counsel for tortious or illegal content in any written submissions filed in the course of their employment duties. A jury trial request was not honored by the court. The Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court's void ruling and conflated the distinct procedural standards for mandamus and reconsideration in denying review, citing an inapposite terrorism case as authority.

The certiorari petition arising from the defamation proceedings was denied by the Supreme Court without stated reasons or substantive consideration of the issues presented.

Since the formal recognition of the Plaintiff's citizenship by the Department of State in 2023, the United States government has denied every administrative claim advanced by the Plaintiff. The United States Patent and Trademark Office declined to process a properly filed patent application and denied a refund of the associated filing fees. The Internal Revenue Service declined to issue a refund on a lawfully filed tax return. During follow-up calls with agency staff, third-party voices were audible employing language prejudicial to the Plaintiff's demands for refund. This proceeding documents the continuation of a pattern of coordinated administrative denial following exhaustion of all available judicial remedies in prior matters.

This appeal challenges the district court's categorical application of absolute immunity in Wilson v. Harris (No. 26-17) without conducting the fact-specific functional analysis required by Forrester v. White, 484 U.S. 219 (1988), and its progeny. The Appellant advances that absolute immunity cannot logically attach to the complete destruction or loss of an entire certiorari filing — SCOTUS No. 25-6039 — where no judicial function was performed and no petition reached any justice for substantive review. The district court failed to distinguish between No. 24-7506, dispatched the same day and properly docketed, and No. 25-6039, the filing for which was lost or destroyed in its entirety, a pattern of selective recognition that defeats any claim of routine quasi-judicial or administrative immunity.

The Appellant further contends that Associate Justice Clarence Thomas's denial of receipt of the petition and denial of documented telephone communications with the Appellant — while functionally acting as spokesperson for the Clerk's Office in denying access to justice and invoking judicial immunity for the Clerk's conduct — constitutes evidence of a conspiracy under 42 U.S.C. § 1985 that the district court was required to analyze independently, rather than subsuming within a blanket immunity ruling. A real and justiciable controversy exists under Article III: the destruction of a certiorari filing before receipt by any justice forecloses any quasi-judicial characterization of the conduct and brings it squarely within the domain the Court's immunity jurisprudence has consistently left unprotected. Finally, the district court abused its discretion by declining to adjudicate the Appellant's prayer for damages, including direct out-of-pocket losses and prejudgment interest, and by dismissing with prejudice without affording leave to amend.