IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

CHARLES TISDALE, ) 

) 

Plaintiff-Appellant, ) 

) No. 12-1124 

v. ) 

) INFORMAL BRIEF 

BARACK OBAMA, et al., ) 

) 

Defendants-Appellees. ) 

APPELLEE FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION’S 

INFORMAL BRIEF FOR AFFIRMANCE 

Appellant Charles Tisdale’s suit against the Federal Election Commission 

(“Commission”), President Barack Obama, and other defendants appears to rest on 

the erroneous legal theory that a person is not eligible to be President unless both 

of his or her parents were born in the United States. Although the district court 

correctly rejected this argument, this Court need not reach the merits of Tisdale’s 

claims in order to affirm the dismissal of his complaint because the federal courts 

lack jurisdiction over this case. The Court should affirm the district court’s 

judgment of dismissal with prejudice. 

BACKGROUND

The Federal Election Commission is the independent agency of the United 

States government empowered to administer, interpret and enforce the Federal 

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Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended (“FECA” or “Act”), 2 U.S.C. 

§§ 431-57.1

 See generally 2 U.S.C. §§ 437c(b)(1), 437d(a), and 437g. The Act 

regulates the manner in which campaigns for federal elective office are financed 

and how information about that financing is disclosed to the public. The 

Commission is empowered to “formulate policy” with respect to the Act, 2 U.S.C. 

§ 437c(b)(1); “to make, amend, and repeal such rules . . . as are necessary to carry 

out the provisions of [the] Act,” 2 U.S.C. § 437d(a)(8); to civilly enforce against 

violations of the Act, 2 U.S.C. § 437g; and to issue advisory opinions construing 

the Act, 2 U.S.C. §§ 437d(a)(7), 437f. 

Although Tisdale’s complaint contains numerous allegations against various 

defendants, his only claim against the Commission involves an advisory opinion 

the Commission issued in response to a request by someone else: Abdul Hassan, 

a naturalized citizen who has announced that he is running for president. See

Verified Complaint (“Compl.”) ¶¶ 34-37; Advisory Opinion (“AO”) 2011-15, 2011 

WL 3917133. In that advisory opinion, the Commission stated that although 

 

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 The Commission is also empowered to administer and enforce the 

Presidential Election Campaign Fund Act (“Fund Act”), 26 U.S.C. §§ 9001-9013, 

and the Presidential Primary Matching Payment Account Act (“Matching Payment 

Act”), 26 U.S.C. §§ 9031-9042. The Fund Act provides a voluntary program of 

public financing of the general election campaigns of eligible party nominees for 

the offices of president and vice president of the United States. The Matching 

Payment Act provides partial federal financing for the campaigns of presidential 

primary candidates who qualify and choose to participate. 

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Hassan could become a federal “candidate” within the meaning of 2 U.S.C. 

§ 431(2), he could not become eligible to receive federal funds under the Matching 

Payment Act because he was not born in the United States and was thus ineligible 

to serve as president. In Tisdale’s prayer for relief, he asks for a declaration 

ordering the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia to review 

Commission AO 2011-15 and “report its findings to the Court.” (See Compl., 

Request for Relief, ¶ C.) 

ARGUMENT 

I. APPELLANT LACKS STANDING TO BRING HIS CLAIMS 

AGAINST THE COMMISSION 

Tisdale lacks standing to bring his claims, and he thus fails to bring a “case 

or controversy” under Article III of the Constitution. Whitmore v. Arkansas, 495 

U.S. 149, 155 (1990). “Standing is a threshold jurisdictional question which 

ensures that a suit is a case or controversy appropriate for the exercise of the courts’ 

judicial powers under the Constitution of the United States.” AtlantiGas Corp. v. 

Columbia Gas Transmission Corp., 210 Fed. Appx. 244, 247 (4th Cir. 2006) (citing 

Pye v. United States, 269 F.3d 459, 466 (4th Cir. 2001)). See generally Valley 

Forge Christian Coll. v. Americans United for Separation of Church & State, Inc., 

454 U.S. 464, 471-76 (1982). 

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“The party invoking federal jurisdiction bears the burden of establishing” the 

elements of standing. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 561 (1992). 

Three elements constitute the “irreducible constitutional minimum” of standing: 

(1) an injury-in-fact, (2) a causal connection between the injury and the challenged 

conduct of the defendant, and (3) a likelihood that the injury will be redressed by a 

favorable decision of the court. Id. at 560-61. 

The first element, an injury-in-fact, is an invasion of a legally protected 

interest that is “concrete and particularized” as well as “actual or imminent,” rather 

than “conjectural or hypothetical.” Id. at 560 (citations omitted). “[P]articularized 

. . . mean[s] that the injury must affect the plaintiff in a personal and individual 

way.” Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560 n.1. Thus, the injury cannot be merely a generalized 

grievance about the government that affects all citizens or derives from an interest 

in the proper enforcement of the law. Id. at 573-74; see also Warth v. Seldin, 422 

U.S. 490, 499 (1975) (“[W]hen the asserted harm is a ‘generalized grievance’ 

shared in substantially equal measure by all or a large class of citizens, that harm 

alone normally does not warrant exercise of jurisdiction.”). 

Tisdale’s grievances are undifferentiated and widely shared, and thus fail to 

satisfy the injury-in-fact requirement for standing. Tisdale never asserts that the 

allegedly unconstitutional candidacies or presidencies of Obama, Romney, or Paul 

will result in any harm that redounds particularly to his detriment. Rather, he 

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suggests that the president’s political decisions will affect American citizens in 

terms of their rights or privileges under programs such as Medicare and Medicaid 

and with respect to issues such as unemployment, foreign policy, acts of war, and 

housing (see, e.g., Plaintiff’s Memorandum of Law to Support Plaintiff’s Case 

(Doc. No. 3-1 at ¶¶ 2, 6, 7)) — matters that affect all or a large class of citizens in 

substantially equal measure. Thus, Tisdale’s generalized grievance about 

constitutional governance on behalf of the American citizenry cannot satisfy 

Article III. See Berg v. Obama, 586 F.3d 234, 239 (3rd Cir. 2009) (holding that 

voter who challenged then-Senator Obama’s eligibility to be a candidate or serve 

as president under Natural Born Citizen Clause suffered “no injury particularized 

to him”); see also Schlesinger v. Reservists Comm. to Stop the War, 418 U.S. 208, 

215-227 (1974) (holding that citizens who had brought suit under the 

Incompatibility Clause challenging the eligibility of Members of Congress to serve 

in the military reserves had only generalized interests and lacked standing). 

 Moreover, Tisdale’s alleged injury is neither traceable to the Commission’s 

advisory opinion nor redressable by the remedy he seeks from this Court. Indeed, 

when a plaintiff’s asserted injury stems from “the government’s allegedly unlawful 

regulation (or lack of regulation) of someone else,” the fairly traceable and 

redressability prongs of standing analysis require more exacting scrutiny. Lujan, 

504 U.S. at 562 (1992) (emphasis in original). “[W]hile not necessarily fatal to 

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standing,” the indirectness of injury “‘may make it substantially more difficult to 

meet the minimum requirements of Art. III: To establish that, in fact, the asserted 

injury was the consequence of the defendants’ actions, or that prospective relief 

will remove the harm.’” Simon v. Eastern Ky. Welfare Rights Org., 426 U.S. 26, 

44-45 (1976) (quoting Warth, 422 U.S. at 505). Here, Tisdale cannot show that 

Advisory Opinion 2011-15 will cause any future president or candidate to injure 

him, or that any personal injury to Tisdale could possibly be remedied by having a 

United States Attorney — who has no authority to review any action by the 

Commission — assess AO 2011-15. (See Compl., Request for Relief, ¶ C.) 

In sum, because he has not suffered a particularized injury-in-fact caused by 

the Commission that could be remedied by the courts, Tisdale lacks standing under 

Article III to pursue his claims against the Commission. 

II. THE DISTRICT COURT CORRECTLY HELD THAT THE 

NATURAL BORN CITIZEN CLAUSE DOES NOT REQUIRE BOTH 

PARENTS TO BE BORN IN THE UNITED STATES 

 

Even if Tisdale had standing to bring his claim against the Commission, his 

legal theory is frivolous. As the district court correctly observed, the Supreme 

Court has long held that “those born in the United States are considered natural 

born citizens.” Tisdale v. Obama, No. 12-00036 (E.D.Va. Jan. 23, 2012) (order 

dismissing case with prejudice), slip op. at 2 (citing United States v. Ark, 169 U.S. 

649, 702 (1898)). And “citizenship by birth is established by the mere fact of birth 

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