[PRE-TRIAL] Civil Suit: The Fourth Imperium v. The Citizenship Office

[Zukchiva]

The Conclave at Large hereby announces…

It has received a Civil Suit from the Fourth Imperium (Plaintiff from hereon) against the Citizenship Office (Defense from hereon). Defense has been accused conducting an action not allowed for by the Citizenship Act… This August Body shell now begin the Pre-Trial Process.

The Pre-trial shall occur on 2024-02-26T01:32:00Z. At that time Conclave shall rule on the admissibility of this motion, determined by the merit and need for trial, and appoint the Presiding Arbiter. If the Conclave by unanimous vote rules the motion in admissible, the case is dismissed. This action is not subject to appeal. The Trial shall begin 2 days after Pre-Trial, February 18. This is to allow Plaintiff and Defense time to settle on their arguments. Note that the Trial Date is subject to appeal; if any of the parties may choose to appeal it it may be done.

Until then, All questions and concerns may be asked in this thread.

TO THE PLAINTIFF AND DEFENSE: Please Telegram to my nation, Zukchiva, all evidence that shall be used in your arguments. You may send as much evidence as you wish, however once February 16th comes, no further evidence shall be considered. Due to a lack of legislation regarding witnesses, I shall state that you must include witnesses as part of your evidence, as well as how they are relevant to the case in hand. In addition, in a motion to introduce the witness, two kinds of objection may occur. First, objection to witness’ relevancy. This can be done when the motion occurs. if successful, the witness shall be disregarded. Second, objection to testimony’s relevancy. This can be done when a witness’ testimony is irrelevant to a case. If successful, the testimony shall be struck down, and removed from the Trial Record. Until then, all witness testimony shall be considered to be a part of Trial Record, provided that their testimony corresponds to a question asked by either Plaintiff or Defense.

[Zukchiva]

Order to Cease and Desist

The Conclave has received a Motion for Civil Trial from Citizen The Fourth Imperium against the Citizenship Office for the February 2024 Citizenship audit.

Thus, the Conclave under Article C.6 of the Concordat, Orders the Citizenship Office to cease the process of removing the Citizenship of Citizen The Fourth Imperium in this specific case, until a time wherein:

• The motion for civial trial is dismissed under the proceedures listed in the Standing Orders of the Conclave
  OR
• The Conclave, in its verdict for the Civil Trial, finds the Citizenship Office to be correct in its actions and allowed to proceed with the removal.

If neither conditions are met, then this Order shall stand.

The indictable penalty for this Order will be decided at a later date by Conclave vote if this Order is not followed.

[Mangegneithe]

I would like to announce that, as the government official responsible for the action The Fourth Imperium dislikes, and as the leader of the Citizenship Office, I shall represent the defendant body.

As such, I would like to ask the Conclave the text of the motion, which would be public if filed through forums, but is private when filed through telegrams. So that I could understand the breadth of the suit.

[Zukchiva]

[CIVIL SUIT] Request for Civil Suit

MOTION FOR CIVIL TRIAL DEFENDENT Citizenship Office REASON(S) FOR SUIT February 2024 Citizenship Audit STATUTE(S) Citizenship Act - #5 by CyberiumShadow TRIAL CHARGES ADVANCED BY- (indicate with "X ") God-Emperor DO YOU HAVE TEP CITIZENSHIP? (indicate yes with "X ") (X) SUMMARY OF EVIDENCE FILED Please see #Government-Plaza (Verify Sending to Viceroy with an "X ") (X) FILED ON BEHALF OF THE GOD-EMPEROR AS I RECIEVED THIS IN MY TELEGRAMS. WHEN I FIND A WAY TO PROVIDE PHYSICAL PROOF WITHOUT…

As to my understanding the suit was filled out with information from the plaintiff by Arbiter Shadow as stated here.

[SirShadow]

See above the screenshotted TG I recieved in the matter. I did literally copy/paste on the forum the Suit

[Mangegneithe]

Many apologies, Viceroy, I should have checked first, I just assumed.

[Zukchiva]

Pre-trial will be extended by a week from today. The Conclave has a draft of the motion it is still deliberating and working upon.

[Zukchiva]

The Conclave presents its verdict:

Ruling on Admissability of Pre-Trial Motion for The Fourth Imperium v. The Citizenship Office

The Conclave unanimously declares the following.

Per the Standing Orders of the Conclave, the Conclave must decide on whether a trial should go forward based upon the merit and need for trial. It is the Conclave’s opinion that this Pre-Trial motion should be dismissed due to a lack of need regardless of merit.

The Conclave understands the Plaintiff’s concerns in being denied citizenship simply due to following the orders of the Eastern Pacific Sovereign Army. However, the requests made by the Defense to maintain Citizenship - a forum post by the Plaintiff followed by verification by the Army’s Overseeing Officer - were reasonable and ultimately would have allowed the Plaintiff to keep Citizenship without much issue in the necessary timeframe of 48 hours.

Beyond this case, the Conclave also believes this matter is better handled by directly fixing the legislation in question. In that vein, the Conclave recommends the Magisterium to re-examine how the Army exemption set out in the Citizenship Act Section 3.7 interacts with the rest of the Act (since it is not clear how Section 3.6 interacts with the exemption) and resolve the conflict established by the Citizenship Act’s Army exemption in Section 3.7 and the Army exemption in Section 5.5 of the Eastern Pacific Sovereign Army Act.

Therefore, the Conclave unanimously considers this motion for trial inadmissible and dismissed.

---

Arbiter Bachtendekuppen attaches the following concurring opinion within this spoiler, representing his own more specific thoughts on the matter. Arbiter Libertanny supports this opinion.

I concur with today’s ruling, but write separately to explain my thinking on some issues we encountered with the Citizenship Act (CA) and the EPSA act.

The Citizenship Office (“the Office") performed a Citizenship audit under Section IV of the Citizenship Act concluding, among other things, that GE’s recorded WA Nation was without WA, and he would lose citizenship unless a correction or change was made within 48 hours. That same day, but after the audit was completed, the OO of EPSA affirmed applicants’ status as an active EPSA soldier. To no avail, as the Office took the position that “citizens themselves notify us of WA status change here, and the OO assent”, and “As God-Emperor has indicated that he would prefer to be stripped of citizenship than change status for the EPSA exception benefits, I’m not sure your affirmation will be sufficient.”. The Office has not clarified since whether it was sufficient or not. GE has not made a post.

GE made an application for suit, and this Conclave published an injunction pending pre-trial adjudication.

Pouring over the Citizenship Act, one finds that a Citizen of TEP must “maintain continuous WA membership with the nation they stated as their WA nation in their application” (CA 3.5). An exception applies, as “Clauses 3.2 and 3.5 shall not apply to any active soldier of the Eastern Pacific Sovereign Army (“EPSA”) as verified by the Overseeing Officer.” (CA 3.7).

The law does not state when or how it is to be determined that a Citizen is an active EPSA soldier. The law does however state that the Grand Vizier shall lead and set out the procedures of the Office (CA 2.2.) using “an official forum thread (“Thread”) that can be utilized for official records, inquiries, the posting of applications, acceptance or denial of applications, acceptance of requests, and other purposes as seen proper by the Office or this law” (CA 2.4).

And the Grand Vizier has done so. The first post of said thread contains the Grand Vizier’s rule that _“If you are an EPSA soldier, you must indicate “EPSA” as your WA nation. The Overseeing Officer will confirm your membership to the Office.”.

GE has not done so. Moreover, it is not in dispute that the OO verified GE’s status as EPSA soldier only after the audit. One could therefore assume that the audit itself was correctly performed.

But our misery does not end here. Does the verification of the OO, without GE posting anything, suffice as a remedy under 4.2 CA? Because 3.7 CA does not grant exemption from 4.2, and 4.2 does not mention mere affirmation of EPSA-status after the audit as a remedy. And there is more. Section 5.5 of the EPSA-act plainly states that “Residents of The East Pacific will not lose their Citizenship if (…) their World Assembly nation changes on the orders of the EPSA”. So even if one would assume that the CA points to GE losing his Citizenship, the EPSA act plainly bars such consequences. Can the Office apply 4.2 CA without breaking 5.5 of the EPSA Act?

So in all probability, a trial would lead to a verdict where the Conclave cannot find the audit regarding GE to be nullified, as it was properly conducted, while TEP law both says GE loses Citizenship (4.1 CA) and doesn’t (EPSA Act 5.5). I call it Schrödingers’ Citizenship.

TEP law as involved in this issue would benefit from the Magisterium sorting out these issues, rather than a cumbersome civil trial ending unavoidably in the above conclusion.

For these reasons, I concur.

This thread will be locked in a few days.

[Mangegneithe]

I thank the Conclave for its time and judgment.