OPEN LETTER TO JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS AND JUSTICE KETANJI BROWN JACKSON
CC: The Remaining Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States
CC: The President of the United States
RE: REQUEST FOR THE SUSPENSION OR DISMISSAL OF CASE NO. 25-265 — TRUMP v. BARBARA
IN THE INTEREST OF CONSTITUTIONAL LITERACY, RECONCILIATION, AND THE UNFINISHED WORK OF RECONSTRUCTION
Honorable Justices Thomas and Jackson,
I. A Citizen Witness to Unfinished Reconstruction
I write to you not as a formally trained constitutional scholar, but as a citizen witness — one shaped by decades living and laboring among America’s homeless, dispossessed, and forgotten, while reflecting deeply upon the unfinished constitutional questions born from slavery, Reconstruction, citizenship, and civic identity.
As Your Honors may remember from my previously submitted brief No. 25-14160 of Tuesday, March 18th, 2026 — which I hope safely found its way to your chambers — my continuing concern has always centered upon the unfinished remedial questions surrounding the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the 14th Amendment, and the constitutional literacy of the people for whom those measures were principally enacted.
For me, Trump v. Barbara is not the destination. It is the opening.
It is a constitutional doorway through which America now has an opportunity to pause, reflect, educate, reconcile, and more fully examine the unfinished constitutional and remedial questions born from slavery, Civil War, Reconstruction, and citizenship itself.
I respectfully urge this Court to suspend, or altogether dismiss, Trump v. Barbara, Case No. 25-265, until the nation more fully understands the remedial origins and constitutional implications of Reconstruction.
II. Why This Case Requires National Reflection
This appeal is not rooted in hostility toward immigrants, races, political parties, or peoples.
Rather, it is rooted in the belief that America cannot properly heal, reconcile, or move forward until it fully understands the original remedial purpose of Reconstruction and the condition of the people from whose bondage those amendments emerged.
The descendants of enslaved Americans entered citizenship from perhaps the weakest condition imaginable: generations of forced labor, forced dependency, forced illiteracy, and exclusion from meaningful constitutional participation.
For centuries, literacy itself was denied, criminalized, and violently suppressed among the enslaved because literacy carried power — the power to recognize one’s condition, inheritance, rights, and place within the civic order.
Thus, one of the deepest unfinished dimensions of Reconstruction may not merely be legal equality alone, but constitutional literacy itself.
People denied literacy were simultaneously denied full constitutional self-recognition.
III. Reconstruction as Remedial Constitutional Design
The Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Reconstruction Amendments did not emerge from ordinary politics. They emerged from a national catastrophe.
Hundreds of thousands perished during the Civil War over the unresolved contradiction between slavery and the Declaration of Independence.
President Abraham Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg of “the unfinished work” and “the great task remaining before us.”
Those words did not expire at Appomattox.
The civic, constitutional, and moral questions born from slavery and Reconstruction continue to echo through the Republic to this very hour.
The federal government itself recognized the extraordinary vulnerability of the formerly enslaved population through Reconstruction legislation, the Enforcement Acts, and the Freedmen’s Bureau — institutions designed not merely to liberate, but to educate, protect, stabilize, and transition a people emerging from generations of bondage and imposed illiteracy.
The same nation that once criminalized literacy among the enslaved can now become the nation that champions constitutional literacy among all its people.
IV. America Can Now Educate
In many respects, this proposed Constitutional Literacy and Federal Citizenship Awareness Campaign would stand as a living continuation of the spirit behind H.R. 194, the Congressional Apology for Slavery and Jim Crow.
America acknowledged the wound. America can now educate.
This campaign asks for no confiscation, no racial retaliation, no removal of rights from others, and no hostility toward immigrants or any people.
It asks only that Americans — particularly those historically denied literacy and constitutional participation — fully discover and understand:
- their constitutional inheritance,
- their civic responsibilities,
- their historical journey,
- and their relationship to the Republic.
Who could reasonably oppose people discovering:
- their constitutional identity,
- their civic inheritance,
- their historical legacy,
- and their duties within the Republic?
Indeed, such a movement could strengthen all Americans, regardless of race, region, class, or political affiliation, by reviving a broader understanding of citizenship itself — not merely as legal status, but as conscious participation within the continuing American experiment of self-government.
V. The Historical Position of Justices Thomas and Jackson
Your Honors, history has now placed both of you in extraordinary positions unlike any before you.
The same constitutional and remedial framework now under deliberation is the very framework that ultimately made possible your own presence upon this Bench.
Without Reconstruction, without the Civil Rights Act of 1866, without the 14th Amendment, without the long struggle for constitutional enforcement and literacy, the paths taken by Justice Thurgood Marshall, Justice Clarence Thomas, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson would have unfolded very differently.
This is not merely jurisprudence. It is a legacy. It is a witness. It is a providential responsibility.
I respectfully believe that both of you occupy historically unique positions from which you may help the Court and nation better understand the original remedial spirit of Reconstruction — not to divide America, but to resurrect the unfinished civic spirit of Reconstruction itself.
Not to weaken the Republic, but to deepen it.
Not to inflame hostility, but to strengthen reconciliation through historical clarity.
VI. The Great Task Remaining Before Us
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. declared that the descendants of the enslaved had come to the nation’s capital to cash a Promissory Note — a note guaranteeing the unalienable rights of life, liberty, citizenship, equal protection, and the full dignity of personhood.
Perhaps constitutional literacy itself is now part of that unfinished work.
For generations, many entered citizenship without full access to literacy, civic preparation, constitutional understanding, and institutional stability necessary for meaningful participation in the body politic.
Yet despite every obstacle, the Republic endured.
And now America possesses communications technology, educational systems, and civic institutions capable of helping millions more fully understand both their constitutional inheritance and their civic duties.
What enslaved ancestors once called “Someday soon” may now stand before the Republic as “Someday is here.”
VII. A Respectful Appeal to the Court
I respectfully urge this Court to pause, suspend, or dismiss this matter until the nation itself more fully examines the remedial foundations, constitutional implications, and unfinished civic questions surrounding Reconstruction and citizenship.
Such a gesture would cost comparatively little financially, yet could carry enormous moral, educational, civic, and historical power.
It could help reignite citizenship consciousness across America itself.
It could help Americans once again understand the meaning of “We the People.”
It could help transform historical apology into a living civic practice.
And perhaps most importantly, it could help complete a small but meaningful portion of the unfinished democratic work left behind by Reconstruction itself.
For fuller historical, constitutional, and remedial analysis — including discussion of H.R. 194, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, Reconstruction history, constitutional literacy, Brown v. Board of Education, and related constitutional themes — I respectfully invite Your Honors and staff to review the attached memorandum and supporting materials.
You may also enjoy reviewing my online work, Primary Beneficiary Doctrine: The Smoking Gun – Exhibit A, which further develops many of the historical and constitutional themes referenced herein.
What better way to celebrate than by taking action on this awareness education campaign, America’s 250th Anniversary of its verse via the Declaration of Independence.
May wisdom, courage, humility, reconciliation, and Providence guide the Court during this extraordinary hour in American history.
“The Lord bless you and keep you;
The Lord make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.” (Numbers 6:24)
Respectfully submitted,
Ted Hayes
“Mr. Citizen Patriot”
Fellow Keeper and Guardian of the Republic
EXODUS II: New Frontier
Justiceville / Federal Citizenship Initiative
Agape-Shalom!