ToadKing
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ToadKing__
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Case Filing
IN THE FEDERAL COURT OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF REDMONT
CIVIL ACTION
IgnitedTnT (represented by ToadKing)
Plaintiff
v.
Commonwealth of Redmont
Defendant
COMPLAINT
The Plaintiff complains against the Defendant as follows:
I. PARTIES
1. IgnitedTnT2. Commonwealth of Redmont
3. Department of State
II. FACTS
1. On or around 11 March 2026, the results of the House of Representatives Election were published, confirming IgnitedTnT as an elected Representative. (P-001)2. IgnitedTnT has continuously served as a Representative since that date.
3. On or around 27 March 2026, Representative Malka resigned from the House of Representatives, creating a vacancy.
4. On 27 March 2026 at 10:00 PM UTC, the Department of State formally opened a Special Election to fill that vacancy, setting out the activity requirements as follows (P-002):
5. On 27 March 2026 at 10:17 PM UTC, the Plaintiff posted the following declaration (P-003):
6. On 29 March 2026 at 11:46 PM UTC, following the close of the declaration period, the Department of State published the official candidate list. The Plaintiff was not included on the ballot. (P-004)
7. The Department of State provided the following express reason for the Plaintiff's exclusion (P-004):
8. Section 8(6) of the Electoral Act provides:
9. The Plaintiff has not been sentenced to any disqualification or ban from public office by any court of the Commonwealth of Redmont.
10. The Department of State, acting in its capacity as the electoral authority of the Commonwealth, applied Section 8(6) deliberately and as a matter of official policy, citing it by name as the sole basis for the Plaintiff's disqualification.
III. CLAIMS FOR RELIEF
1. Violation of Constitutional Rights
The Redmont Civil Code Act (RCCA), Part XI, Section 1 provides:Three elements must be established:
- the Defendant acted under colour of law;
- the Defendant deprived the Plaintiff of a right secured by the Constitution; and
- the violation was intentional or negligent.
1.1 Colour of Law
The Department of State is the electoral authority of the Commonwealth of Redmont, charged by the Executive Standards Act with the "Facilitation of Federal elections (and other elections as requested), including debates." When the DOS excluded the Plaintiff from the ballot, it did so in the exercise of that official authority - citing a specific provision of the Electoral Act as its legal basis. There is no question that the act of disqualification was performed under colour of law. The Department was not acting in a private capacity. It was exercising governmental power in an official proceeding pursuant to a statutory mechanism.1.2 Deprivation of a Constitutional Right
The Constitution, Part V, Section 35(1), provides:This provision is framed as a right - one that is expressly guaranteed by the "Charter of Rights and Freedoms". The Plaintiff, as a citizen of the Commonwealth, unquestionably holds this right. The question before this Court is whether Section 8(6) of the Electoral Act lawfully abridges it.
The text of Section 35(1) is specific and unambiguous. It identifies one, and only one, circumstance under which the right to run for office may be curtailed: "as punishment for a crime". This carve-out is exhaustive. It specifies the limit on this right with exactness. Had other restrictions been intended - administrative, structural, or eligibility-based - they would not have identified a single, narrow exception. The language's deliberate narrowness reflects a constitutional choice.
1.2.1 Lex Specialis
The Defendant may point to the preamble of Section 35, which provides that guaranteed rights are subject to "reasonable limits prescribed by law that are justified in a free and democratic society." This argument fails on the foundational principle of lex specialis derogat legi generali: the specific law prevails over the general.
The preamble is a general clause. It speaks in broad terms, applying across every right enumerated in Section 35 without distinction. Section 35(1) is a specific provision. It addresses one particular right - the right to run for elected office - and it identifies, with precision, the one circumstance under which that right may be limited: as punishment for a crime. Where a specific provision has already defined its own exception, a general clause cannot be invoked to supplement or expand upon it. The specific governs the general, not the other way around. That is what lex specialis demands.
To apply the preamble's reasonable limits language to Section 35(1) as though it operates independently of the specific carve-out already written into that provision would be to render the words "unless as punishment for a crime" entirely superfluous. If the preamble alone were sufficient to justify any reasonable statutory restriction on the right to run for office, there would have been no need to specify a limit at all. This isn't an oversight. Section 35(8) provides that citizenship rights apply "unless otherwise codified in law outside this Constitution." That language is an express statutory carve-out - a deliberate constitutional mechanism that permits ordinary law to modify the right in question. Section 35(1) contains no such language. It contains only the criminal punishment exception. The absence of a carve-out is a clear choice. Where the Constitution intended ordinary law to be able to modify a right, it said so. Where it did not, the silence is deliberate. The preamble sets the general framework, and Section 35(1) sets the specific rule. Under lex specialis, the specific rule controls.
1.2.2 Weighted Test
Should the Court decline to apply lex specialis and instead reach for the weighted standard test established in Dartanman v Commonwealth [2023] SCR 13 - weighing government necessity against the importance of maintaining individual rights - Section 8(6) fails that test on its own terms.
The weighted standard test was first articulated in [2023] SCR 13, where the Court held that when evaluating the validity of a governmental limitation on a constitutional right, it is necessary to "weigh the government necessity of taking said action against the importance of maintaining individual rights." This Court subsequently adopted and applied that same framework in Snowy_Heart v Commonwealth [2023] FCR 76, where it applied the test directly to an election eligibility dispute. The [2023] FCR 76 Court described the weighted test as requiring it to first "establish whether or not the actions conducted by the Defendant was in 'reasonable limits'" before weighing those limits against the individual right at stake. The Plaintiff accepts this as the operative framework should the Court decline the primary textual argument. What the Plaintiff submits is that an honest application of that framework to Section 8(6) - using precisely the analytical tools those courts employed - exposes the restriction as one that cannot survive scrutiny.
In [2023] SCR 13, the Court found the DOS's party registration requirements constitutionally permissible because they constituted, in the Court's words, "an empirical, objective standard" that was "reasonable and does not discriminate against social status." The Court was satisfied because the restriction was consistent and rationally connected to a legitimate government interest: maintaining orderly elections and ensuring that parties had genuine public support. The restriction treated everyone the same. It did not single out a class of otherwise-qualified candidates and bar them categorically.
Section 8(6) does not share those characteristics. It is not an empirical or objective standard applied uniformly. It is a categorical exclusion that applies to one class of candidates - sitting Representatives - while expressly permitting an analogous class - sitting Senators - to contest seats within their own chamber "(e.g. a Representative cannot run in a special election for the House of Representatives, but a Class A Senator can run for a Class B Senate seat)". The [2023] SCR 13 Court's approval of the DOS's threshold rested on its consistency and objectivity. Section 8(6) fails both of those qualities within its own text. A restriction that cannot meet the standard the SCR itself applied to uphold a government limit cannot be said to constitute a reasonable and justified limit on a constitutional right.
If a Class A Senator successfully contests a Class B Senate seat, they vacate their Class A seat. That vacancy triggers a further special election. The downstream administrative consequence of the permitted scenario is identical to the downstream consequence of the prohibited one: a sitting representative wins a new seat, their old seat becomes vacant, and another election must follow. If the government's necessity for Section 8(6) rests on preventing that chain of events - a sitting member contesting a seat and potentially triggering a further vacancy - then the provision's own internal exception produces the very outcome it purports to prevent. The Defendant cannot point to "administrative efficiency" or "electoral stability" as a compelling necessity when the statute expressly tolerates the same consequence in the Senate context. The internal inconsistency is evidence that the restriction is arbitrary in character, and where a restriction is arbitrary, no genuine justification exists to deprive any candidate of their constitutional right, including this Plaintiff.
What [2023] SCR 13 establishes is that government necessity must be genuine, consistent, and rationally connected to a legitimate state interest. Section 8(6) satisfies none of those requirements. It treats identical downstream consequences differently depending on which chamber is involved, it singles out one class of candidates while exempting an analogous class within the same provision, and it cannot identify a necessity that its own text does not immediately contradict. The government's necessity, on the evidence of Section 8(6) itself, does not exist.
The application of Section 8(6) to the Plaintiff was not within reasonable limits, because a restriction that rests on no constitutional foundation cannot be reasonable by definition. In [2023] FCR 76, the Court identified constitutional grounding as the source of legitimacy that made a limit on the right to run for office permissible under the weighted test. The Court's precise finding was that "the limitation imposed by the Electoral Act, a constitutional amendment, acts as a reasonable limit" on the right to run for office. That reasoning rests on a critical premise: the constitutional character of the Electoral Act justified the restriction. The Defendant may invoke that finding here, pointing to Section 8(6) of the same Electoral Act as carrying the same legitimacy. That argument fails on the Constitution's own terms. Section 51 provides that "Only text physically contained within the Constitution itself may be considered a part of the Constitution. No text outside of this document may be considered constitutionally binding in any way." The Electoral Act is not physically contained in the Constitution. Whatever the [2023] FCR 76 said about its character, Section 51 is unambiguous: the Electoral Act is "stripped of any constitutional authority, and reclassified as ordinary statute". Section 8(6) is therefore an ordinary statute. The constitutional legitimacy that the Court identified as the foundation for a permissible limit does not exist here, and the Defendant cannot borrow it. On the weighted test, a restriction of purely statutory character cannot claim the constitutional grounding that the court held was necessary to justify a limit on this right.
[2023] FCR 76 treated the right to run for office as a substantive entitlement that warranted genuine scrutiny. The plaintiff in that case was removed from the ballot on a playtime calculation. The Court found in the plaintiff's favour, issuing consequential damages and a writ of mandamus. Critically, the Court did not treat removal from the ballot as a minor procedural matter - it treated it as a deprivation serious enough to ground both constitutional analysis and civil remedy. The Plaintiff in the present case has faced the exact same deprivation - removal from the ballot - but the government's constitutional footing in this case is weaker than anything the [2023] FCR 76 Court was asked to assess. Here, the DOS applied Section 8(6) correctly as written. The question is whether Section 8(6) itself is constitutional. If that Court found removal from the ballot warranted a remedy where the government could at least point to a statutory requirement, however misapplied, then the government's actions here fall further still from reasonable limits - and the case for a remedy is more substantial.
What [2023] FCR 76 establishes is that the right to run for office is a substantive constitutional entitlement, that removal from the ballot is a deprivation serious enough to warrant remedy, and that the legitimacy of any restriction depends on it being grounded in something more than ordinary statutory authority. Section 8(6) provides none of that grounding. The constitutional foundation is completely absent. The restriction is not within "reasonable limits", and the deprivation suffered by this Plaintiff is at least as serious as the one that the Court remedied.
The weighted test, applied faithfully to the principles articulated in [2023] SCR 13 and [2023] FCR 76, does not produce a result favourable to the Defendant. Whether the Court applies the specific textual rule of lex specialis or the weighted standard test, the conclusion is that Section 8(6) does not lawfully abridge the Plaintiff's right under Section 35(1) of the Constitution.
1.2.3 Passports
The Defendant may point to the passport requirement imposed by the Passport Act and reflected in the Special Election announcement as evidence that the legislature is permitted to impose eligibility conditions beyond those enumerated in the Constitution. The passport requirement is constitutionally distinguishable from Section 8(6) in a legally meaningful way. The Passport Act mandates that a passport must be issued to any applicant who has reached the active player threshold - the same threshold already required to run for office. Any citizen who qualifies to stand for election qualifies, as a matter of right, to receive a passport. The requirement imposes no real barrier; it is a procedural verification of eligibility that any qualifying candidate can satisfy. Section 8(6) is categorically different as it does not impose a procedural step, but instead, imposes a categorical exclusion - an entire class of otherwise-qualified citizens is barred from candidacy regardless of their qualifications, purely by virtue of their current office. The distinction is between verifying eligibility and denying it. The former is permissible; the latter is not. The Plaintiff was excluded for one reason only: Section 8(6).
1.2.4 Closing
The Plaintiff was not sentenced to any disqualification from office. The only basis for his removal from the ballot was Section 8(6) of the Electoral Act - a statutory eligibility restriction that is not, and cannot be, characterised as a criminal punishment. It does not flow from a criminal verdict. It was not imposed by a court. It is simply a legislative rule that purports to limit who may run for office. The legislature's power to prescribe reasonable limits under Section 35 operates only in the space the Constitution leaves open. Where a specific provision has already defined its own exclusive exception - as Section 35(1) has - that space is closed. Ordinary statute cannot expand it. Section 35(1) reserves that power exclusively to the criminal justice process.
In removing the Plaintiff from the ballot, the Defendant deprived the Plaintiff of his constitutionally guaranteed right to run for elected office, on a basis that the Constitution does not authorise. That is a deprivation of a right secured by the Constitution.
1.3 Intentionality
The RCCA defines an intentional violation as one where"the violator acts with the purpose of causing harm or with substantial certainty that harm will result from their conduct."The DOS did not accidentally exclude the Plaintiff. It identified his declaration, assessed it, and then deliberately excluded him, citing Section 8(6) by name as the specific statutory basis for his removal. The disqualification was a considered, deliberate act of official application of law. The Department knew, with substantial certainty, that excluding the Plaintiff from the ballot would deprive him of the ability to contest that election. That is precisely the harm that resulted.
The intentional element does not require the Defendant to have known that it was acting unconstitutionally; it requires that the act causing harm be deliberate. It was. The intentional element is plainly satisfied.
1.4 Conclusion
The Department of State, acting under colour of law as the electoral authority of the Commonwealth, deliberately applied Section 8(6) of the Electoral Act to remove IgnitedTnT from the ballot of the Special Election. Section 8(6) restricts the right to run for elected office on grounds other than criminal punishment. The Constitution does not permit this. The Plaintiff was deprived of a right secured by the Constitution, intentionally, by an agent of the Defendant acting in its official capacity. The Defendant is therefore liable for a Violation of Constitutional Rights under RCCA Part XI, Section 1.
IV. PRAYER FOR RELIEF
The Plaintiff respectfully requests that this Court grant the following relief:1. A declaration that Section 8(6) of the Electoral Act is unconstitutional and of no force or effect, as it purports to restrict the right of a sitting Representative to contest a special election for a seat in the House of Representatives, in contravention of Section 35(1) of the Constitution.
2. $7,500 in Nominal Damages, pursuant to RCCA Part III, Section 4, in recognition that the Plaintiff's constitutional right to run for elected office was unlawfully abridged.
3. 30% Legal fees as provided under RCCA Part III, Section 7.
4. Such other and further relief as this Court deems just and proper.
EVIDENCE
By making this submission, I agree I understand the penalties of lying in court and the fact that I am subject to perjury should I knowingly make a false statement in court.
DATED: This 30th day of March 2026
Last edited:
