Ross’ Ref Q’s – How do I sue the President?

We get a lot of reference questions at the King County Law Library.
The refrain goes that because we aren’t practicing attorneys, we can’t offer legal advice—as librarians, we can only offer resources.
That said, some questions are very interesting & inspire me to do some research of my own, collected here in this column. Don’t construe this as legal advice!

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Welcome to the first edition of my column, Ross’ Ref Q’s, wherein interesting KCLL reference questions are interrogated. I’ve only been with the law library for two years (a bulk of which was during our COVID shutdown), and as such I’m still somewhat green with legal reference—my previous library experience was in municipal and community college libraries. I love this job because I’m always learning, and here in this column, perhaps you will learn something too. Or perhaps you will be entertained by my unsophisticated research; I’ll take what I can get!

A goal of this column is to highlight questions that might be pertinent to KCLL users— though to get the ball rolling I’ve chosen a reference question that is slightly off the wall, but is asked often enough to warrant attention:

How do I sue the President?

What I love about this question, which is the most common phrasing, is that it blows right past “CAN I sue the President,” which is a somewhat more interesting and tricky question. As procedural questions go, though, the can does impact the how, as we’ll see.

This is also a question that has received a fair amount of interest recently. These publications are worth a read, however in treating this column like an actual reference interview, in which I tend to prefer treatises over online articles or posts, I’ll simply leave these hyperlinks embedded for your casual perusal.

My first thought was about personal jurisdiction. Presidents have been sued before, but were they being sued as The President, or as private citizens who happened to be the President.

Before digging into this question, I was aware of such concepts as sovereign immunity, so I sought out a treatise on the subject. I found Rotunda and Nowak’s Treatise on Constitutional Law-Substance and Procedure on Westlaw, which as a Thomson publication seemed authoritative enough. §7.3(b) deals with “Absolute Versus Qualified Immunity from Civil Damage Claims.”

“The President should have absolute immunity from damage actions for his official actions so that the threat of personal liability does not affect his official judgment”

§ 7.3(b) Presidential Civil Damages Immunity, 1 Treatise on Const. L. § 7.3(b)

Emphasis theirs. So I see this question splits into two parts: suing the President for official acts, and for unofficial acts.

Suing the President for official acts

To sue the President for his official acts, which if I had to hazard a guess would be the aim for most of our inquiring patrons, is a bit of a dead end. Rotunda & Nowak go on to say that the Court grants “absolute immunity from civil damages because of his official actions.” Evidently injunctions and subpoenas are still on the table, but damages are not.

I had pulled up an American Jurisprudence explainer on the Federal Tort Claims Act, thinking it would dovetail nicely into the “official” side of things, but FTCA §1346(b) specifically requires monetary damages. So that’s out.

With only injunctions and subpoenas on the table, the official side starts to become less interesting. I wanted a L&O-style cross-examination, with The President floundering under Jack McCoy’s dogged questioning!

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65 deals with injunctions, and the Federal Judiciary website has pro se injunction paperwork. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure are bursting at the seams with rules about discovery & subpoena, so if the reference interview was going that way, I would pull out Wright & Miller Federal Practice and Procedure to offer Rules Practice resources.

Suing the President for unofficial acts

This side, which is by nature apolitical, is also less interesting. From here, because we’re suing the President for unofficial acts, it’ll follow standard channels for jurisdiction.

If you’re suing for damages pertaining to federal law and/or you’re asking for at least $75,000 in damages, it’ll land in Federal Court. The reference interview ends with that hyperlinked Pro Se guide for United States District Court, Western District of Washington. It includes links to forms and explains overall procedures.

Alternatively, if thresholds such as Washington’s “long arm” statute are met, the case could land in state court. For that, I recommend using KCLL’s Starting a Civil Lawsuit in Superior Court form packet! Sunglasses emoji!

Lastly

I recommend coming in to either KCLL location to access not only the resources mentioned here, but also the existing case law on suing the president, via Westlaw (did you know that KCLL has three Westlaw terminals in the Seattle location, and two in Kent?). There have been relatively few lawsuits against Presidents, so it is worthwhile to note the channels used previously.

Best of luck!