To the Honorable Chief Justice and Associate Justices
Supreme Court of the United States
Washington, D.C. 20543
Re: The Suit Does Not Fit: Four Grounds for Dismissal, Suspension, or Rehearing in Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, et al. v. Barbara, et al., No. 25-365
Honorable Justices:
Introduction: The Case Rests on a False Premise
I respectfully submit this letter urging this Court to dismiss, suspend, rehear, or otherwise withhold judgment in No. 25-365 because the case rests upon a false constitutional premise, the wrong beneficiary, the wrong source of law, and an appearance of institutional circularity that should not be permitted to become national constitutional law.
This case has been argued as though the first words of the Fourteenth Amendment, “All persons born,” independently created a general immigration-birthright citizenship rule. But the Fourteenth Amendment did not create the citizenship house. It placed a constitutional lock upon a citizenship house already built by the Civil Rights Act of 1866 for the American African Freedmen and their children.[1]
First Ground: The Fourteenth Amendment Is the Lock, Not the House
The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was not an immigration statute. It was a Reconstruction civil-rights statute born from Dred Scott, chattel slavery, military emancipation, Confederate rebellion, Black Codes, and the refusal of states and local authorities to treat the newly freed American African as citizens. Its command that such citizens enjoy the same civil rights “as is enjoyed by white citizens” was not primarily an instruction to immigrants, legal or illegal. It was a federal command to the states, courts, officers, and white citizens: behave yourselves toward the Freedmen, and treat them with the same civil standing you recognize among yourselves.
The Wrong Starting Point
The anchorist theory begins in the wrong place. It claims the lock while avoiding the house. It quotes “All persons born” while refusing to enter through the Civil Rights Act of 1866, in which the citizenship settlement was first declared and the original beneficiary class is identified. That is a false premise sufficient by itself to require dismissal, suspension, or rehearing.
The Citizenship House, Built in 1866
The Act of 1866 identified and protected a people whose status had been denied by Dred Scott, whose bodies and labor had been enslaved, whose freedom had been secured by war and emancipation, and whose civil standing was being attacked by state and local law immediately after the war. The Fourteenth Amendment was then applied to that Act as a constitutional safeguard. It was the lock, not the original grantor of the house.
Second Ground: The Suit Does Not Fit
If the anchorist claim were argued directly under the Civil Rights Act of 1866, it would have to walk through the whole statute, including its “not subject to any foreign power” limitation, its remedial purpose, its enforcement provisions, its presidential duty, and its Supreme Court review structure. These provisions are not a loose garment for every child born to every foreign national by mere presence on American soil. They are the tailored suit of Reconstruction, fitted to the American African Freedmen and their children.
Johnson’s Veto Identifies the Suit-Wearer
President Andrew Johnson’s own veto message confirms this. Johnson opposed the Civil Rights Bill, yet even as a hostile witness, he identified the beneficiary. He objected that the bill operated in favor of the Negro emerging from long years of bondage, and he contrasted that class against foreigners. Therefore, even the opposing President knew whose suit Congress had tailored. The anchorist theory now argues against the very historical record supplied by the vetoing President himself.[
The Fourteenth Amendment Minefield
Nor does the full Fourteenth Amendment fit the anchorist theory. The anchorist wants to stand only on the stone marked “All persons born,” while avoiding the surrounding minefield. But the second sentence of Section 1 immediately addresses state abuse: no state shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens, deprive persons of due process, or deny equal protection. That language fits the Black Codes and postwar oppression of the Freedmen. It does not fit any historical claim that the Amendment was written to cure “Immigrant Codes” against the children of foreign nationals
Sections 2, 3, 4, and 5 confirm the same Reconstruction field. They concern representation, rebellion, oath-breaking officeholders, Union debt, Confederate debt, slave-loss claims, and congressional enforcement. They are not immigration provisions. They are Civil War and Reconstruction provisions. The whole Amendment says Freedmen, rebellion, state abuse, federal protection, and restoration of the Union. It does not say illegal immigration, visitor births, temporary foreign presence, or bypass of Article I, Section 8.
The Civil-Rights Command
Civil Rights, in this Reconstruction setting, was not a general immigration benefit package. It was a federal command that white citizens, state governments, courts, officers, and local authorities must treat the Freedmen with the civil standing “as is enjoyed by white citizens.” In plain terms, the Act and Amendment said: white citizens, behave yourselves under constitutional law toward the newly freed American African. That suit fits the chattel-descended Freedmen. It does not fit the anchorist theory.
Third Ground: Article I, Section 8, and the Wrong Legal Ancestor
The anchorist theory collides with Article I, Section 8, and imports the wrong legal ancestor. The Constitution gives Congress the power to establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization. If the Fourteenth Amendment is read to grant automatic citizenship to the children of persons who entered or remained unlawfully, without regard to lawful allegiance, domicile, or political jurisdiction, then the Amendment is being used to override the Naturalization Clause rather than harmonize with it.[
The Naturalization Clause Cannot Be Bypassed
The Constitution should not be read to make Congress’s naturalization power unnecessary whenever foreign nationals can obtain the same result by birth on the soil. If a person from any nation on earth may unlawfully enter, give birth, and thereby produce constitutional citizenship without the congressional naturalization process, then Article I, Section 8 is made weaker than the anchorist theory. That cannot be the proper reading of a Constitution that assigns naturalization to Congress.
This Is Not the King’s Law
The anchorist theory also leans upon English common-law soil-born subjectship, as though American federal citizenship after the Civil War should be controlled by the old law of the King. But the United States is not England. The American Revolution was fought to escape royal subjectship and the customs of sovereign domination. American citizenship is not the King’s claim over bodies born on his soil. It is a constitutional membership in a republic. The Fourteenth Amendment is not a British subjectship clause. It is the American constitutional lock placed upon the 1866 Freedmen citizenship settlement.
< Fourth Ground: Institutional Circularity and Beneficiary Erasure>
On April 1, 2026, the Court heard the anchorist theory argued by counsel who has publicly grounded her own story in birthright citizenship.
This does not, by itself, disqualify counsel. This is not a personal objection to counsel.
But it does reveal the problem in living form: the disputed doctrine appeared before the Court and argued itself as though already proven, while the original 1866 beneficiary class was not centered, briefed, or adjudicated as the primary subject of the Reconstruction citizenship settlement.
The Doctrine Argued Itself
The Court was not merely hearing a neutral theory from the outside. It was hearing a theory that, through counsel’s own public story, had placed itself at the podium as though its legitimacy had already been settled. That is constitutional circularity. The proper question should have come first: Does this birthright theory lawfully arise from the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Fourteenth Amendment, Article I, Section 8, and the Reconstruction settlement, or has it been assumed into law by repetition and institutional force?
The Institutional Failure to Teach the 1866 House
There is also an institutional concern that deepens the problem. For more than a century, major civil-rights organizations have possessed the legal training, funding, scholarship, public platforms, and national influence to educate the American people on the Civil Rights Act of 1866 as the original federal citizenship settlement for the American African Freedmen and their children. If a seventy-five-year-old lay scholar can discover and raise this question, then surely institutions calling themselves civil-rights guardians could have done so long ago.
Yet in this case, these institutions have not centered the chattel-descended federal citizen as the original beneficiary of the 1866 Act and Fourteenth Amendment. Instead, they have advanced or supported an anchorist theory that invokes the Freedmen’s constitutional lock for modern immigration purposes while leaving the original occupants of the citizenship house unnamed, unprotected, and historically displaced.
The SPLC, Civil-Rights Institutions, and Appearance of Bias
This is not merely a personal grievance. It goes to the integrity of the presentation before the Court. For years, the Southern Poverty Law Center and related civil-rights voices have publicly framed my work and organizations in hostile terms because I warned that the slogan “nation of immigrants,” when used without regard to the chattel-descended American African, erases the very people upon whose enslaved backs the nation’s wealth and constitutional crisis were built.[11]
Now, in No. 25-365, major civil-rights institutions appear in support of an anchorist theory that does exactly what I warned against: it uses the Fourteenth Amendment’s Reconstruction language for an immigrant-birthright theory while failing to center the original 1866 beneficiary class.
The Court need not find a formal conspiracy to recognize the appearance problem. It is enough that institutions that failed to preserve and teach the Freedmen’s citizenship house now ask this Court to use the Fourteenth Amendment lock for a different constitutional occupant. That institutional posture casts serious doubt on the completeness and neutrality of the presentation before the Court.
The Hon. Minister, Malcolm X’s Warning, and the Liberal-Institution Problem
Malcolm X warned that the open conservative enemy and the smiling liberal manager may belong to the same controlling order. In his wolf-and-fox metaphor, the wolf shows his teeth openly, while the fox shows his teeth as though smiling. He also warned that Black people could be politically maneuvered by party structures that claimed to represent them while keeping them powerless.
That warning is relevant here because the opposing institutional forces in No. 25-365 arise largely from the very liberal civil-rights camp Malcolm X warned Black people to examine carefully. These organizations present themselves as defenders of civil rights, yet in this case, they have not centered the most fundamental civil-rights question of all for the chattel-descended African American: the 1866 federal citizenship house itself. If they have the education, money, lawyers, scholars, platforms, and influence to argue national constitutional law, then they also have the power to teach and protect the 1866 Freedmen citizenship settlement. Their failure to do so, followed now by their support for anchorism, gives practical force to Malcolm X’s warning. The original beneficiaries were managed, spoken for, and politically used, while their own citizenship inheritance was left unguarded.
The April 1 Constitutional Inversion
The April 1, 2026, oral argument revealed a constitutional inversion. Two American African descendants of the chattel people sat on the bench, and I, as a chattel-descended federal citizen and attempted amicus, was present by brief and witness. Yet the proceeding centered a derivative birthright theory while the original beneficiaries of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment remained historically unnamed.
The original 1866 citizens were in the Palace, but the derivative theory was at the podium. That is why the April Fools Day character of the proceeding should not be ignored.
Consequences Cannot Rewrite Reconstruction
The consequence arguments raised by the anchorist side are not irrelevant, but they cannot create constitutional authority. If the nation has misapplied the Citizenship Clause for generations, then correction may be painful and must be handled with wisdom, mercy, and lawful transition. But hardship cannot rewrite Reconstruction history. Emotional consequence cannot transform the Freedmen’s constitutional lock into a universal immigration shortcut.
Conclusion: Dismiss, Suspend, or Rehear Before Judgment
Therefore, I respectfully ask this Court to dismiss the case as improvidently granted, suspend judgment, order rehearing, or otherwise require full briefing on the original 1866 beneficiary question before deciding No. 25-365. The Court should not decide a citizenship case from a false premise, under the wrong history, for the wrong beneficiary, by importing the wrong law.
The Civil Rights Act of 1866 is the house. The Fourteenth Amendment is the lock. The American African Freedmen and their children are the original occupants. The anchorist child does not fit the suit.
Respectfully submitted,
Ted Hayes
American African, chattel-descended federal citizen
Mr. Citizen Patriot
424-248-4219
Ted@TedHayes.uis
July 19th, 2026
Footnotes
[1] U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1; Civil Rights Act of 1866, ch. 31, 14 Stat. 27, enacted Apr. 9, 1866. See also National Constitution Center, “Civil Rights Act of 1866,” Historic Document Library, noting that Congress overrode President Johnson’s veto and that elements of the Act became a template for the Fourteenth Amendment.
[2] Civil Rights Act of 1866, § 1, ch. 31, 14 Stat. 27, 27. Section 1 declared that certain persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power were citizens, and that such citizens shall have the same rights to contract, sue, give evidence, inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey property, and to the full and equal benefit of laws and proceedings for security of person and property “as is enjoyed by white citizens.”
[3] Civil Rights Act of 1866, §§ 1–10, ch. 31, 14 Stat. 27. Relevant provisions include the citizenship declaration in § 1; criminal penalties for deprivation of rights under color of law in § 2; federal judicial and enforcement machinery in §§ 3–5; presidential and federal officer enforcement duties in §§ 8–9; and Supreme Court review in § 10.
[4] President Andrew Johnson, Veto Message on the Civil Rights Bill, Mar. 27, 1866, in which Johnson objected that the bill made the “distinction of race and color” operate “in favor of the colored and against the white race,” discussed persons emerging from “long years of bondage,” and contrasted the bill’s treatment of that class against “intelligent, worthy, and patriotic foreigners.”
[5] U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1. The second sentence provides: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States,” nor deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process, nor deny equal protection.
[6] U.S. Const. amend. XIV, §§ 2–5. Section 2 addresses apportionment and voting penalties; § 3 addresses oath-breaking insurrectionists and rebels; § 4 addresses public debt, Confederate debt, and slave-loss claims; § 5 grants Congress enforcement power.
[7] U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 4, granting Congress power “To establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization.”
[8] See United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), discussing English common-law birthright principles; see also The Declaration of Independence para. 2, 1776, asserting the right of the people to alter or abolish a government destructive of their rights.
[9] Supreme Court of the United States, Docket No. 25-365, Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, et al. v. Barbara, et al.; Transcript of Oral Argument, Trump v. Barbara, No. 25-365, Apr. 1, 2026; public reporting and organizational materials identifying Cecillia Wang as ACLU National Legal Director and describing her public birthright-citizenship story.
[10] See, e.g., ACLU, “Barbara v. Donald J. Trump”; NAACP Legal Defense Fund, “Supreme Court Arguments Wrap in Landmark Challenge to Trump Birthright Citizenship Executive Order,” Apr. 1, 2026; Asian Law Caucus, “Supreme Court Arguments Wrap in Landmark Challenge to Trump Birthright Citizenship,” Apr. 1, 2026.
These public materials identify the ACLU, ACLU affiliates, the Legal Defense Fund, the Asian Law Caucus, and the Democracy Defenders Fund as counsel or allied legal organizations in the birthright-citizenship challenge.
[11] Southern Poverty Law Center, “The Federation for American Immigration Reform Creates ‘Black’ Front Group,” Oct. 19, 2006; Southern Poverty Law Center, “What’s Behind a ‘Black’ Anti-Immigration Group,” Oct. 19, 2006; Southern Poverty Law Center, “Ted Hayes Fails to Rally Blacks Against Immigrants,” Jan. 8, 2008.
[12] ACLU, “Supreme Court Arguments Wrap in Landmark Challenge to Trump Birthright Citizenship Executive Order,” Apr. 1, 2026; NAACP Legal Defense Fund, “Supreme Court Arguments Wrap in Landmark Challenge to Trump Birthright Citizenship Executive Order,” Apr. 1, 2026; Asian Law Caucus, “Legal Groups Representing Plaintiffs File Supreme Court Merits Brief in Birthright Citizenship Case,” Feb. 19, 2026.
[13] Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet,” Apr. 3, 1964, Cleveland, Ohio, describing Southern Democrats as political “wolves” and Northern Democrats as political “foxes,” both belonging to the same “dog family”; see also Malcolm X speeches using the wolf-and-fox metaphor concerning white conservatives and white liberals.