by Adrienne Rockenhaus
TO THE HONORABLE JUDGE RAYMOND KETHLEDGE:
Your Honor has built a distinguished judicial legacy on a single, powerful principle: The Text is the Law.
You have written extensively against the “Administrative State” and the danger of allowing unelected bureaucrats to invent powers that Congress never gave them. In your landmark opinion in United States v. Bistline, you famously argued that defining penalties is a legislative function, not a bureaucratic one. You have consistently warned that when agencies drift from the text, they threaten the separation of powers. (See “Judge Raymond Kethledge and the Separation of Powers”).
So why is the Clerk of your Court enforcing a “policy” that appears nowhere in the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure?
In United States v. Rockenhaus (Case No. 25-1974), the Clerk’s Office rejected a “Life or Death Emergency Motion” as well as a supplement to the emergency motion, filed by a Next Friend on behalf of a disabled veteran suffering from seizures.
The Clerk, Alicia Harden, did not forward the motion to a panel. She did not flag it for judicial review. She rejected it “unfiled,” citing a “policy” that the Court does not accept pro se filings from third parties.
Now, because of Alicia Harden’s decision to reject my life-or-death motion, my husband, Conrad Rockenhaus, may die.
This is because he was severely injured in an illegal, violent raid by U.S. Marshals at my sanctuary home. FCI Milan, the BOP prison in the Eastern District of Michigan, would have to admit what the marshals did to my husband in order to get him medical care. Warden Eric Rardin is choosing to let my husband, Conrad Rockenhaus, have seizures to death in the SHU instead.
The Missing Text
I challenge the Court to point to the text in Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 2 (FRAP 2) that authorizes this rejection.
The text of FRAP 2 is explicit and unambiguous:
“On its own or a party’s motion, a court of appeals may—to expedite its decision or for other good cause—suspend any provision of these rules in a particular case…”
The Textual Reality: The Rule grants the Court (the Article III Judges) the power to suspend rules for “good cause” (such as a dying veteran). It does not grant the Clerk the power to suspend the Constitution. By intercepting the motion, the Clerk prevented the Court from ever exercising the discretion the text of the rule guarantees.
The “Shadow Rule”
By rejecting the motion “unfiled,” the Clerk did not apply the law; she applied an unwritten administrative “policy” to override the explicit text of FRAP 2.
Your Honor has ruled that agencies cannot “rewrite” statutes to suit their convenience. Yet, Alicia Harden has effectively rewritten the appellate rules to strip a brain-injured defendant of his right to ask for “Next Friend” standing under Whitmore v. Arkansas.
The Question for Judge Kethledge If the Clerk can invent a policy that overrides the text of the Federal Rules, then the “Rule of Law” in the Sixth Circuit has been replaced by the “Rule of the Clerk.”
We ask you to demand the text. Show us the statute that allows an administrative employee to block a Judge from seeing a motion regarding a Grand Mal seizure in duty court, federal officer violence, and deliberate indifference. If it doesn’t exist, then Alicia Harden is acting ultra vires.
THE EVIDENCE:
- See the “Unwritten Rule” in Action (The Rejection Letter)
- See the Emergency Motion the Clerk Suppressed
- See the Supplement to the Emergency Motion (Also Suppressed)