Pierre Q. Pullins v. Kate Sweeney Bell

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Submitted October 16, 2023*
Decided October 18, 2023
Before
FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge
AMY J. ST. EVE, Circuit Judge
THOMAS L. KIRSCH II, Circuit Judge
No. 22-2913
PIERRE Q. PULLINS,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
KATE SWEENEY BELL, et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States
District Court for the Southern
District of Indiana, Indianapolis
Division.
No. 1:20-cv-01311-JRS-MJD
James R. Sweeney II, Judge.
O R D E R
Pierre Pullins, who ran unsuccessfully several times for a seat in the United
States House of Representatives, appeals the dismissal of his lawsuit that alleged mis-
conduct by state and municipal electoral officials. The district court concluded that he
lacks standing to bring certain claims and that the complaint otherwise does not state a
claim on which relief may be based.
* We substitute Kate Sweeney Bell, the current Clerk of Marion County and Secretary of the Election
Board, for Myla Eldridge, who held those posts when the suit began. After examining the briefs and the
record, we have concluded that oral argument is unnecessary. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a); Cir. R. 34(f).

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No. 22-2913 Page 2
We accept the factual allegations in the complaint as true and draw all reasona-
ble inferences in favor of Pullins. See Roberts v. City of Chicago, 817 F.3d 561, 564 (7th Cir.
2016). According to the complaint, Pullins initially protested election fraud in 2006. He
asserted that someone had been falsifying primary results since his first run for office
that year. Pullins again ran for a seat in Indiana’s Seventh Congressional District in
2018. During the Democratic primary campaign, Pullins publicly inquired into possible
ethical violations by his opponent, the incumbent. Before primary day, two local news-
papers and a local radio station excluded Pullins from their coverage. And a city em-
ployee working for a former Democratic Party chairman threatened Pullins, telling him
that he was dealing with “people that could make him disappear.” Pullins reported the
threat to city officials but did not receive a response.
Two years after the 2018 primary election, Pullins sued the Clerk of Marion
County and Secretary of the Marion County Election Board, in her official capacity, al-
leging that she and “all clerks from 2006 to the present” had falsified Pullins’s vote to-
tals. Pullins also demanded that the Election Board republish the 2006 results. After the
Board did so, Pullins amended his complaint to cast this action as evidence of a cover-
up, and he added various state and municipal officials involved in the 2018 election.
Pullins generally alleged that the defendants, along with the incumbent’s campaign,
conspired to suppress Pullins’s ethics inquiry and to falsify the 2018 vote totals.
Pullins’s amended complaint added multiple counts corresponding to his theories of re-
lief under federal and state law, including election fraud, conspiracy, obstruction of jus-
tice, libel, political persecution, intimidation, and emotional distress. He also alleged
constitutional violations and violations of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 52 U.S.C.
§10101 et seq.
Two sets of defendants (municipal and state) moved to dismiss the amended
complaint, and the district court granted the motions. 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 173889 (S.D.
Ind. Sept. 26, 2022). First, the court explained that Pullins did not state a claim under the
Voting Rights Act because he did not allege an infringement of his right to vote. The
court also rejected Pullins’s suggestion that he had a claim under the Help America
Vote Act, observing that Pullins did not allege voter impersonation. Second, the court
explained that Pullins, a private citizen, could not prosecute the defendants for obstruc-
tion of justice under 18 U.S.C. §1519, a criminal statute. Third, Pullins’s allegations did
not give rise to a plausible inference that the State defendants were involved in a con-
spiracy to falsify primary election results, and the claim against the municipal defend-
ants was untimely. Fourth, the court dismissed the generic claim of “election fraud” un-
der federal law for lack of standing, see Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(1), because federal law
does not create “a cause of action upon which his injury can be adequately redressed.”
Finally, the court concluded that Pullins’s state-law claims are untimely. Election fraud

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must be asserted within 14 days under Indiana law, and the other alleged wrongful
conduct occurred outside the two-year statute of limitations.
Pullins first challenges the dismissal of his claim that the defendants obstructed
justice, arguing that the defendants tried to cover up fraud by restating the 2006 election
results. As the district court correctly noted, however, obstruction of justice is a criminal
offense that only a criminal prosecutor can enforce. See United States v. Texas, 143 S. Ct.
1964 (2023); Linda R.S. v. Richard D., 410 U.S. 614, 619 (1973). Pullins does not
acknowledge the principle of Linda R.S., let alone attempt to show how he is entitled to
enforce a criminal statute. (Indeed, the “Argument” section of his brief does not cite a
single judicial decision, and his reply brief likewise is unburdened by citations.)
Pullins continues to refer to a federal claim of “election fraud,” but he did not
identify any federal statute addressed to generic “election fraud.” The district court
thought that this deprived Pullins of standing, but the absence of a statutory right
means that the plaintiff loses on the merits. Standing requires only injury, causation,
and redressability; the need for a substantive statute is a different kind of problem. See
Lexmark International, Inc. v. Static Control Components, Inc., 572 U.S. 118 (2014). Pullins
also needs but does not have a private right of action, but this too is a statutory rather
than a jurisdictional issue. See Cort v. Ash, 422 U.S. 66, 78 (1975).
The Constitution presumptively leaves it to the states to administer federal elec-
tions (Art. I §4), and even a deliberate violation of state election laws by state officials is
just a violation of state law. The Constitution does not guarantee that states will enforce
their laws correctly, a proposition that holds for election laws as well as other kinds of
law. Shipley v. Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, 947 F.3d 1056, 1062 (7th Cir. 2020).
Pullins challenges the dismissal of his conspiracy claims under 42 U.S.C. §1985
against the municipal defendants. The district court deemed these claims untimely.
Pullins maintains that all claims against defendants added to the complaint relate back
to its original filing date. As the district court correctly explained, however, Pullins’s
original complaint (filed just barely within two years of the last allegedly wrongful act
in May 2018) named only the county election board and state election commission and
complained only of the falsification of election results between 2006 and 2018. He did
not add the municipal defendants or any allegations of “conspiracy, libel, political per-
secution, intimidation, and emotional distress” until the amended complaint filed on
November 2, 2020, after the two-year statute of limitations had expired. See Ind. Code
§34-11-2-4(a)(1); Hoagland v. Town of Clear Lake, 415 F.3d 693, 699–700 (7th Cir. 2005). The
conditions for relation back under Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(c) are unmet, because these new de-
fendants could not have known, from the original complaint, that Pullins had any griev-
ance against them. Pullins’s argument that the re-posting of the 2006 election results

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restarted the statute of limitations does not help his cause: He did not file the amended
complaint within two years of that act, either.
Next, Pullins contends for the first time on appeal that the district judge should
have recused himself for political bias, presumably under 28 U.S.C. §455. A recusal mo-
tion in the district court is not required before we will consider an argument for judicial
disqualification, so the appellees’ assertion of waiver is incorrect. See Thomas v. Dart, 39
F.4th 835, 844–45 (7th Cir. 2022). But Pullins does not show that Judge Sweeney had a
disqualifying conflict. Instead, he asserts that the judge knows, has worked with, or is
related to, attorneys and judges who in turn have connections to Democratic politics or
the news media. We do not see why any of these things would be deemed a conflict, but
at all events they are too attenuated to cause a reasonable, well-informed observer to
question the judge’s impartiality. See United States v. Barr, 960 F.3d 906, 919–20 (7th Cir.
2020); United States v. Simon, 937 F.3d 820, 826 (7th Cir. 2019).
Pullins’s other arguments do not engage with the district court’s reasons for dis-
missing the balance of the amended complaint. Although we construe pro se filings lib-
erally, Pullins’s failure to develop his other assertions means that they are forfeited.
Over the years Pullins has filed 21 cases in the Southern District of Indiana, pre-
senting fanciful and often outlandish allegations against high-ranking executives at
Amazon, Wal-Mart, and other businesses with no apparent relation to him, and against
federal, state, and local officials, including former presidents and judges. Only two of
his cases lasted as far as the summary-judgment stage, and each of those ended in a
judgment against him. Of the five appeals this court has considered, none had merit.
This barrage of frivolous litigation must stop.
Fed. R. App. P. 38 permits a court of appeals to give notice that an appeal ap-
pears to be frivolous and to award sanctions after allowing the litigant an opportunity
to respond. We now give Pullins that notice. He has 14 days to show cause why penal-
ties, which may include fines and awards of attorneys’ fees, should not be imposed.
One last subject. The judgment entered by the district court provides: “This ac-
tion is dismissed for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted and for
lack of subject matter jurisdiction.” We have explained why the absence of a statute
supporting Pullins’s civil claims does not equate to a lack of jurisdiction—though under
Linda R.S. there is a genuine jurisdictional deficiency with respect to a private litigant’s
attempt to enforce a criminal statute. It follows that the judgment must be modified to
be exclusively on the merits with respect to all issues other than private enforcement of
criminal law. As so modified, the judgment is affirmed.

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