Nguyen v. Pelosi

Background

Mai-Trang Thi Nguyen filed the second amended complaint without a lawyer. She alleged that Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, and Mitch McConnell, Minority Leader of the United States Senate, violated the Constitution’s Treason Clause. Her core allegation was that they negligently failed to perform their duties in response to the results of the 2020 presidential election. The complaint cited the Federal Tort Claims Act as a basis for federal jurisdiction.

The opinion notes that the court had previously found Nguyen’s original and first amended complaints frivolous when denying her application to proceed without paying the filing fee. Nguyen later paid the filing fee and filed the second amended complaint, which the court said was substantially similar to the earlier complaints.

Reason for dismissal

The Federal Tort Claims Act waives the federal government’s sovereign immunity—the rule generally protecting the government from being sued—but only for certain claims and only when the lawsuit is brought against the United States. The court held that Nguyen named the wrong defendants because she sued Pelosi and McConnell rather than naming the United States as the sole defendant. The court also stated that sovereign immunity concerns the court’s jurisdiction, meaning the court’s power to hear the case.

Disposition

The court dismissed the second amended complaint with leave to amend. Nguyen could file a third amended complaint within 30 days of the order to address the identified deficiencies. The order states that failing to meet the deadline or failing to correct the deficiencies would result in dismissal of the deficient claims with prejudice.

The court also denied as moot Nguyen’s petition to change the defendants’ names and denied as moot her motion to reschedule the initial case-management conference. It continued the June 23, 2021 case-management conference to August 25, 2021, at 2:00 p.m. The order was signed by Judge Lucy H. Koh.