I call Bullshit.

talking to you, Article III court, talking to you.

8/11/2025

Alter v US 1:25-cv-02573

The Constitutional Issue:
To shield public employees from personal injury lawsuits for job-related damages, the courts have overstepped, effectively barring public access to vital federal court functions. These functions include asserting rights and identifying constitutional mandates that the government has exceeded, and at the very least, assigning fault for whoever may ask the court to do so.

Lujan v Defenders of Wildlife cannot apply to such suits, nor is personal harm a constitutional requirement for bringing such a suit that asserts the Constitution against a government that is not complying with its mandates. It is precisely what the courts are for.

It should be crystal clear to the courts that immunities (sovereign, presidential, congressional) only apply to liability suits involving criminal or civil liability. There is, and can be, no immunity from the declaratory judgment act or enforcement of constitutional mandates.

If someone wants to say “that was an insurrection” and provides enough evidence for the court to believe so as well, there should not be any impediments beyond the merits, because we can’t always rely on the DOJ to pursue a claim, rather than every branch saying “who am I to say”, you’re a judge. Please Judge.

You should be able to say, “no, we are not being invaded by El Salvador”, or “The latest executive order violates the emoluments clause”, or “start a war without a vote from congress”, or “order fired the whole federal government irrespective of merits”. The constitution had an “I call bullshit clause”, but we have penciled it out in crayon with doctrine.

It is the public’s collective and private right and DUTY to raise such issues where there is merit, and it is the Court’s duty to look at the merit in ALL such cases.

This does not mean the frivolous cases can’t or shouldn’t be dismissed; however, that frivolity must be grounded in the merits and evidence brought, not doctrine. The courts absolutely CAN and MUST review the merits in all such cases, and be empowered to conform the remedy to a lawful and just one, instead of rejecting the claims made.

Suppose politicians are given a blank check to predicate and legally defend policy choices that would otherwise be illegal, on facts they allege. In that case, those facts must be reviewable without requiring injury in fact, because the good faith presentation of facts is the glue that holds it all together. The courts have a role to agressively play here, that they cannot shrink from.

It’s not ALL the courts can do; it’s the minimum they must do.

I’ve lost my faith in the system’s ability to correct itself, sadly. But there are laws that protect our right to call “bullshit”, and it couldn’t hurt to try and use them.

8/11/2025 Case assigned to The Hon. Royce C Lamberth on Aug 5, 2025 - 1:25-cv-02573
I guess we’ll see.. ?

8/4/2025

Finalized my Alter v US complaint, and it’s off to DC.

It’s not the Constitution that sucks, it’s the system, as Lincoln said in his last speech,

”The People of These United States Are the Rightful Masters of both Congresses and Courts, Not to Overthrow the Constitution, but to Over-throw the Men Who Pervert that Constitution” - Abraham Lincoln

Somewhere along the way, we have lost all meaning and purpose of citizenship.
We are the stewards of our government, not its victims.
We are the guardians of our rights, certainly not the DOJ at the moment.
Rights advocacy has become a business that profits off nibbling at the edges, while leaving the blatant corruption and lawlessness unattended.

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

for the DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

JOE ALTER,Plaintiff,

v.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, et al.,Defendants.

“When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it.”— Justice Sotomayor, dissenting, McMahon v. DOJ, 24A203 (2024)

COMPLAINT FOR DECLARATORY AND INJUNCTIVE RELIEF

INTRODUCTION

This action seeks a declaration that the rigid standing doctrine developed in Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555 (1992), as applied to structural constitutional claims, violates the Constitution by denying citizens meaningful access to Article III courts. The Constitution assigns to the judiciary the duty to interpret and assert its limits. That duty is not conditional on whether a plaintiff can demonstrate personal injury, pecuniary loss, or individualized harm. Structural provisions—such as the Good Behavior Clause, the Appointments Clause, and Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment—exist to bind government actors, not to protect only those who can quantify private damage.

A citizen who alleges that government officials have acted in defiance of constitutional limits raises a justiciable controversy. The judiciary’s role is to test the government’s fidelity to law, not to require the citizen to expose personal hardship as the price of oversight. When courts impose heightened standing barriers on such claims, they abdicate their constitutional function and convert judicial restraint into judicial avoidance.

Over time, standing doctrine has been applied in ways that invert this relationship. Instead of empowering citizens to defend constitutional structure, courts have come to demand concrete harm—economic, physical, or otherwise—as a condition of access. But structural assertion is not merely a private right; it is a public obligation. Courts cannot disclaim their constitutional role merely because a litigant seeks to defend principle rather than recover damages.

JURISDICTION AND VENUE

This Court has jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1331 (federal question) and authority to issue declaratory relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2201. Venue is proper under 28 U.S.C. § 1391(e) because defendants are officers or agencies of the United States and relevant events occurred in this district.

PARTIES

Plaintiff. Joe Alter is a United States citizen residing in California. He has repeatedly attempted to bring cases raising serious constitutional questions about government structure, including judicial ethics, executive overreach, and assertion of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Each case has been dismissed or delayed on standing grounds without adjudication of the merits. These barriers obstruct citizen assertion of unconstitutional government conduct.

Defendants. The United States of America is the real party in interest in cases where standing doctrine is used to shield federal action from review. Defendant agencies and officers include the Judicial Conference of the United States, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, and unnamed officials who assert or apply standing doctrine in ways that prevent citizen assertion of constitutional boundaries.

FACTUAL BACKGROUND

1. Since 2024, Plaintiff has filed several lawsuits raising structural constitutional claims:

o Alter v. Trump, D.D.C. No. 25-cv-00480 (Judge Reyes) – dismissed June 2025 for lack of standing; appeal under consideration.

o Alter v. DOJ/Bondi, D.D.C. No. 25-cv-01160 – appointment of a special prosecutor; DOJ motion to dismiss filed July 2025.

o Alter v. McConnell, 9th Cir. No. 24-1276 – breach of oath of office in Trump impeachment; pending since March 2024 without ruling.

o Alter v. Alito et al., 9th Cir. No. 24-2348 – judicial misconduct and Good Behavior Clause; pending since April 2024.

o Alter v. FCC, D.D.C. No. 25-cv-00745 (Judge Amir H. Ali) – APA challenge to broadcast license renewal and electioneering; awaiting preliminary ruling.

o Alter v. DOGE/Musk/Trump, D.C. Cir. No. 25-5172 – APA challenge to executive overreach and failure to appoint independent prosecutor; en banc review sought; appellate brief filed.

2. Each of these matters presented documented facts and serious constitutional questions. Yet none received a merits ruling. They were dismissed, delayed, or ignored solely due to standing barriers not grounded in constitutional text.

3. The cumulative effect of these dismissals is to deprive Plaintiff—and by extension any citizen—of a judicial forum to assert structural constitutional provisions. This undermines the judiciary’s role as defined in Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803): “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”

4. In Bond v. United States, 564 U.S. 211 (2011), the Supreme Court recognized that individuals may raise structural constitutional claims because structural limits protect individual liberty. Likewise, Lexmark Int’l, Inc. v. Static Control Components, Inc., 572 U.S. 118 (2014), clarified that prudential standing rules are judge-made, not jurisdictional, and cannot be used to block claims where Congress has created a cause of action or where the Constitution itself confers the right to assert its provisions.

5. Recent decisions, including Trump v. CASA (2025) and Trump v. J.G.G. (2025), have further limited collective relief mechanisms by narrowing injunctions and habeas procedures. As courts reduce procedural avenues for systemic assertion, they must correspondingly preserve the ability of individual citizens to bring structural claims. Otherwise, constitutional boundaries become unenforceable.

6. Courts act beyond their proper role when they dismiss such cases sua sponte by invoking unrelated or discredited pro se litigation. Doing so converts the judiciary into an advocate for government defendants and forecloses constitutional accountability without adversarial testing.

7. At its core, the current standing regime instructs citizens to mind their own business—to stay in their lane, to defer to the political branches, to refrain from questioning the legality of government action unless they can show specific, personal injury. But how can we expect the citizen to be the caretaker of his neighbor’s freedoms, as the Constitution implicitly demands, if every branch of government—including the courts—rebuffs his effort to engage? If citizens are told they have no standing to defend the very boundaries that protect us all, then the system fails not only the individual litigant but the republic itself.

8. Unlike the political branches, which are by nature adversarial and partisan, Article III courts are designed as neutral constitutional forums. Their essential function is to adjudicate claims of legal right—not to await political consensus, nor to discourage participation through procedural gatekeeping. In structural cases, where the subject matter concerns the fidelity of government action to constitutional mandate, the court must serve as the forum for good faith debate, where both parties are presumed to seek the public good, and where the citizen’s voice is not conditioned on damage suffered but on principles defended. As the Supreme Court reaffirmed in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. __ (2024), federal courts are "not to reflexively defer to the executive," but are instead called to exercise independent judgment and "common sense" when evaluating whether agency action (or inaction) comports with law and serves the public interest. Where the Court has expansively interpreted standing to vindicate certain individual rights, it must equally permit citizens to raise structural claims meant to preserve constitutional boundaries.

9. While Supreme Court precedent carries weight, it applies only to the facts and parties presented. Finality in one case does not equate to universal foreclosure of future challenges, particularly where different plaintiffs raise structurally distinct claims. The Supreme Court is the court of last review—not the gatekeeper of all future constitutional discourse. Nothing in the Constitution, nor in Marbury v. Madison, grants the Supreme Court exclusive authority to prevent lower courts from hearing similar cases on their own record. If lower courts treat dismissal in one case as preclusion against all others, they risk converting Article III from a safeguard of liberty into an instrument of silence, undermining the very judicial independence the Constitution secures. Selective enforcement of standing doctrine—permissive in some contexts, hostile in others—undermines the judiciary’s obligation to administer justice without favor.

10. This structure has invited a nation of victims, not citizens. It discourages preventive oversight and demands that individuals not only suffer personal harm, but be humbled by it and beg for relief—rather than assert the rights that are their constitutional inheritance. In doing so, it creates a business of victimhood that satisfies only private grievances, while leaving no meaningful room for civic participation in the maintenance of constitutional boundaries.

11. At the same time that individual citizens are denied standing unless they disclose personal tragedies, courts routinely grant standing to corporate entities and non-persons alleging abstract harms. This inversion elevates fictional actors over real people who are willing to put their names and liability at stake. It undermines the constitutional expectation that the people—not proxies of capital or agency abstraction—are the rightful stewards of legal accountability. This practice has transformed civil court into merely a commercial enterprise for rights advocacy, while stripping individuals of their right to assert constitutional principles and mandates that protect them.

CLAIMS FOR RELIEF

Count I – Violation of Article III and Marbury v. Madison

By applying standing barriers to prevent structural constitutional claims, defendants and the judiciary as an institution have violated Article III by abdicating their duty to say what the law is and to adjudicate claims involving the limits of government power.

Count II – Violation of Separation of Powers

Standing doctrine, as applied, operates to insulate the executive and legislative branches from judicial oversight by individual citizens, contrary to the checks and balances envisioned in the Constitution and recognized in Bond v. United States and Loper Bright v. Raimondo. Where the Court has expansively interpreted standing to vindicate certain individual rights, it must equally permit citizens to raise structural claims meant to preserve constitutional boundaries.

Count III – Unconstitutional Application of Judge-Made Prudential Doctrine

The judiciary’s reliance on prudential standing barriers to dismiss structural claims exceeds constitutional authority and ignores the Supreme Court’s instruction in Lexmark Int’l, Inc. v. Static Control Components that such rules cannot override textually granted rights.

Count IV – Denial of Access to Courts (First and Fifth Amendments)

By denying a forum to assert public structural claims absent personal injury, the current doctrine violates the constitutional guarantee of access to courts and due process, infringing the plaintiff’s right to participate in the preservation of constitutional boundaries. Selective enforcement of standing doctrine—permissive in some contexts, hostile in others—undermines the judiciary’s obligation to administer justice without favor.

PRAYER FOR RELIEF

Plaintiff respectfully requests that this Court:

1. Declare that structural constitutional claims brought by citizens may not be dismissed solely for lack of concrete personal injury, where the Constitution itself provides the governing standard and no express textual bar exists;

2. Declare that the use of judge-made prudential standing doctrines to preclude citizen enforcement of structural constitutional boundaries violates Article III, the First Amendment, and the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment;

3. Declare that citizen plaintiffs asserting such structural claims are entitled to judicial review on the merits, and that courts must not dismiss such claims sua sponte without adversarial process;

4. Declare that prior dismissals of Plaintiff’s cases—such as Alter v. Trump (25-cv-00480), Alter v. DOJ/Bondi (25-cv-01160), Alter v. McConnell (9th Cir. 24-1276), Alter v. Alito et al. (9th Cir. 24-2348), Alter v. FCC (25-cv-00745), and Alter v. DOGE/Musk/Trump (D.C. Cir. 25-5172)—demonstrate a systemic misuse of standing doctrine and preclusion principles, including dismissal without merit and prolonged procedural stagnation, resulting in the denial of judicial access to constitutional claims that implicate public structure and legal fidelity;

5. Declare that in structural advocacy cases—where constitutional mandates are asserted and no damages are claimed—no single Supreme Court decision may bar future structurally distinct challenges brought by other citizen plaintiffs. Lower courts retain both jurisdiction and discretion to adjudicate such matters based on their own factual records and legal arguments, and are not divested of that authority by prior decisions with materially different claims or parties;

6. Issue any further declaratory or equitable relief necessary to restore the constitutional role of citizens in asserting public structural claims.

Respectfully Submitted,

Joe Alter, In Pro Per
Dated 8/4/2025