On July 8, 2025, we filed a Motion for Entry of Default Judgment against these Wake County North Carolina Defendant Judges under rule 55.

Judge Brian Ratledge; Judge Julie Bell; Judge Damion McCullers; and Judge Jennifer Bedford

…based on the First Lawsuit filed in July 2024—in their individual capacities.

After their official capacity claims were dismissed on March 5, 2025, it became clear that the North Carolina Department of Justice did not differentiate which capacities they were representing the judges in. This means the North Carolina Department of Justice represented them only in their official capacities, leaving their personal liability unaddressed.

Now, it’s time to see if the State of North Carolina will enforce the law equally for court officers, or whether these judges will be treated as above the law.

THIS POST SERVES AS A PUBLIC RECORD—

HOLDING THEM ACCOUNTABLE AND ENSURING TRANSPARENCY

FOR WHATEVER COMES NEXT

SEE THE FILED MOTION FOR ENTRY OF DEFAULT
UNDER RULE 55(A)

Download Rule 55(a) Filing

On May 27, 2025, we notified the U.S. Judicial Conference under Rule 21(a)(1) that a pattern of procedural evasion by multiple Fourth Circuit judges was foreclosing federal review of constitutional claims — particularly those brought under §1983. We cited Williams v. Reed (2025), Exxon Mobil (2005), and Great Western Mining (2010) as binding precedent being systematically bypassed.

Our previous post here documents how the Fourth Circuit sent us a letter requesting “clarification” of our claims and how they for under Williams v Reed. SEE BELOW:

The Aftermath

On June 23, the Fourth Circuit issued this letter in response to our clarification.

This letter did not:

• Respond to the Rule 21 notice,

• Acknowledge the documented pattern, or

• Reference the constitutional issues raised.

Instead, it did:

• Cite Local Rule 6(b)(3) to declare that our most recent submission was “not accepted” because it didn’t correct a previously identified “error”;

• Fail to name such error;

• Fail to offer any path to correction.

The letter then closed with this line:

“Further submissions will not be acknowledged unless the filing requirements are met.”

At that moment, the court didn’t just decline to engage — it stepped outside the process entirely.

No longer consider. No longer accept. No longer deny.
Just act as if it doesn’t exist.

🔍 What This Actually Means

This wasn’t procedural housekeeping. It was a containment response — issued after oversight was triggered.

The Fourth Circuit has now:

• Ignored a formal referral under Rule 21.

• Refused to engage the §1983 constitutional claims.

• Offered no mechanism for further review.

• Preemptively shut down future filings — without analysis, record, or ruling.

This isn’t a gate. It’s a sealed firewall.

It doesn’t say, “We disagree.”
It says, “You no longer exist in this process.”

This Is the Doctrine

The Supremacy Clause promises federal protection.

• §1983 is the mechanism.

• Rule 21 is the safety valve.

The Fourth Circuit has now built a doctrinal structure to evade all three.

Their “unspoken” firewall doesn’t just burn the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.
It vaporizes the pathway to enforce it.

The cartoon above doesn’t exaggerate. It maps the truth.

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Approximately three weeks ago we posted “The Fourth Circuit Has a Williams Problem.” This week, following the Judicial Council’s response and an invitation to clarify, we submitted a formal Rule 6(c) clarification—documenting how the Council’s prior dismissal under Rule 5 is structurally incompatible with Williams v. Reed (2025), the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling that federal courts cannot use procedural doctrines and judicial bars to block constitutional review under §1983.

Why This Matters

In Williams, the Court held: when procedural barriers like exhaustion or Rooker-Feldman are applied in ways that functionally prevent §1983 claims from being heard—even before the merits are reached—that foreclosure violates due process. The ruling wasn’t advisory or split. It was a categorical, unanimous instruction: federal courts must adjudicate constitutional claims. Labeling them as “state appeals in disguise” does not make them disappear.

That’s precisely what happened in our case.

Despite presenting clear federal questions—on delays, refusals to review post-judgment motions, and misapplication of procedural rules—the district court invoked Rooker-Feldman and dismissed. The Fourth Circuit affirmed without discussion, stating it “discerned no error.” When we brought this structural misalignment to the Judicial Council in a Rule 6-compliant complaint, the Council dismissed it under Rule 5, claiming there was “no probable cause”—without addressing Williams, and without identifying any factual deficiency.

This clarification is designed to correct the record—and compel engagement.

The Core: This Isn’t About a Bad Ruling. It’s About Structural Misalignment.

Our filings don’t contest the legal reasoning of a single judge in isolation. They expose a pattern:

• Procedural doctrines misapplied despite controlling precedent;

• Constitutional claims systematically unaddressed on the merits;

• Judicial conduct that enables insulation, preventing §1983 accountability for state actors.

Williams made clear: when federal courts act in ways that shield constitutional violations from review, they violate the very due process they are meant to protect. The issue now is not doctrinal disagreement—it’s judicial compliance with Supreme Court authority.

SIX JUDGES, SIX DOCKETS, ONE AVOIDED QUESTION

1. Judge Flanagan (District Court) dismissed the claims under Rooker-Feldman without addressing the federal questions.

2. Judge Wilkinson (Fourth Circuit) affirmed without comment on the constitutional issues.

3. Judge Wynn (Fourth Circuit) did the same.

4. Judge Thacker (Fourth Circuit) joined in the affirmance, without independent reasoning.

5. Chief Judge Diaz (Fourth Circuit Judicial Council) dismissed the related judicial complaint with no discussion of Williams or the documented misalignment.

6. Judge Niemeyer (Fourth Circuit Judicial Council) reacted our follow-up Rule 6(c) clarification by recasting it under Rule 5—again, without identifying a single factual deficiency, precedent conflict, or procedural flaw.

What Happens Now

We’ve made the record clear. If Williams cannot be acknowledged in this context—where all three pillars it addressed (delay, denial, and procedural misuse) are plainly present—then the Fourth Circuit risks signaling that even a unanimous Supreme Court ruling carries no institutional weight here.

But if the Council reopens the complaint and addresses Williams directly, it will mark a necessary step toward restoring federal oversight where it belongs.

Final Word (For now)

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The Fourth Circuit now faces a choice:

• Between omission and precedent.

• Between procedural bypass and constitutional duty.

• Between internal deflection and federal structural alignment.

We’ve sent the clarification.

Now, we watch—and we record.

⬇️ Download our clarifications

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See the Fourth Circuit In action (inaction)

“I see nothing! Nothing!”

Williams v. Reed 2025 was unanimous.
The Fourth Circuit refused to see it.

For transparency and public accountability, this statement and supporting documentation are fully accessible here:
https://www.leveragethelaw.com/4th-circuit-williams-problem

👉 Scan the QR code for the full complaint …and response.

Sincerely,
Michael Scott Davis & Stetson Mansfield Webster
Web: Leverage the Law
E-mail: contact@leveragethelaw.com

On April 2, 2025, we submitted a formal judicial misconduct complaint to the Fourth Circuit Judicial Council. It was not emotional or vague. It was surgical, precise, and anchored in clear, authoritative precedent.

We meticulously documented how several federal judges deliberately bypassed a critical Supreme Court ruling to evade review of serious constitutional violations.

We cited foundational Supreme Court decisions:

• Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (2005)

• Great Western Mining & Mineral Co. v. Fox Rothschild LLP (2010)

• Williams v. Reed (2025) — a unanimous 9–0 decision issued just months earlier **(February 2025)

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Williams is clear and unequivocal:

“Federal courts may not use procedural doctrines to foreclose §1983 claims involving constitutional injury.”

So, how did the Fourth Circuit respond to our documented challenge?

They cited Rule 5 — originally meant to quickly dismiss genuinely meritless or repetitive complaints without unnecessary back-and-forth. Here, however, it was misused: no explanation, no engagement with Williams v. Reed — the very precedent at the heart of our communication.

They simply wiped, shrugged, and discarded it.

This isn’t hyperbole. It’s an observable pattern of institutional behavior, fully documented and now publicly visible. The Fourth Circuit didn’t just ignore us — they ignored the Supreme Court.

• This is procedural insulation, not misinterpretation.

• This is deliberate non-engagement, not disagreement.

• This is judicial evasion, not judicial discretion.

Rule 5 wasn’t designed to nullify Supreme Court precedent. But that’s exactly how it was used here.

A Broader Pattern of Judicial Misalignment

What Happens When the Court That’s Supposed to Keep Judges Honest Refuses to Act?

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals is widely considered one of the least likely — if not the least likely federal circuits in the entire country to hold state judges, courts, or officials accountable when they violate the law. Not because it can’t. Because it won’t.

For example, let’s say you’re: Arrested without due process in North Carolina, or a family court judge curtails your parental rights without justification, or a state actor makes a ruling so far off the law it doesn’t resemble justice at all.

In virtually any other Circuit, you could challenge that in federal court. As far as we can tell, if anyone ever wanted to demonstrate what a Circuit Court split looks like—this would be it.

If you’ve lived it, you know the feeling. If you haven’t, someone you know or love probably has.

That sinking realization that laws are only as strong as their enforcement — and that in the Fourth Circuit, enforcement in any practical sense doesn’t exist. It jeopardizes everyone’s constitutional rights and sets a dangerous precedent for future judicial behavior.

We Are Formally Submitting This Public Statement Into the Official Records of:

• The Judicial Council of the Fourth Circuit

• The U.S. Judicial Conference

Because silence from these bodies will itself become evidence of the systemic pattern we’ve identified.

For transparency and public accountability, this statement and supporting documentation are archived and fully accessible here:

https://www.leveragethelaw.com/4th-circuit-williams-problem

This issue is bigger than any single court or individual case. It’s about whether powerful institutions can selectively ignore the law.

When judges use procedural gamesmanship to avoid reviewing clear constitutional violations — that’s not law. That’s performance.

In 2014, I went pro se in a high-conflict case. I quickly went through the money I had for a lawyer, but I did have questions—and a paralegal degree I’d earned just before everything really fell apart. Over the next ten years, I didn’t just learn how the system worked. I learned how it didn’t.

So did Stetson Webster. He was an It Architect when we met—trained in systems, logic, and structure. And it showed. Like me, he ran into a judicial ruling that failed the most basic procedural tests. I gave him the appellate structure I’d used to win a reversal. He adapted it to his case—and won. And we began to realize: this wasn’t just about us.

It was about what the courts were doing.

We didn’t start out trying to prove anything. But over time, we began to see the same patterns—delays, dodges, dismissals, and the same legal language used to justify outcomes, no matter how disconnected from due process they were.

Eventually, we filed a 42 U.S.C. § 1986 Civil Rights complaint in the Eastern District of North Carolina.

We raised valid federal questions in clearly written filings. And still, we saw the same result. That’s when we began publicly posting the filings—not to re-litigate state court rulings or launch incoherent rants, but to show what these filings actually were: clean, constitutional based arguments based on Supreme Court precedent. The kind that shouldn’t have been ignored.

But the pattern repeated. Denial. Distortion. Silence.

We’ve learned from experts, including a family law litigator, former state attorney general, and former federal law clerk. We’ve worked alongside each other in active federal litigation. We’ve filed § 1983s. We’ve had cases dismissed. And we’ve kept coming back, cleaner and clearer each time.

So we got sharper. And quieter. And more precise.

We began tracking exactly what courts said when they didn’t want to rule. And we noticed something strange: the more accurate we got, the more obvious the disconnects the responses became.

And, all the while they were saying these had no merit or standing, one of those cracks showed. Judge Brian Ratledge—the then lead family court judge in our district—was forced to recuse himself, explicitly citing our filings. And now, he is leaving family court altogether. We don’t see this as a victory, but rather as a signal: something’s been too broken for too long.

This Substack is part of our record.

We’re not here to try and change a "corrupt system” or focus on how bad things are.

We know awareness is important and have seen several reform efforts collapse into emotional noise or performative outrage. We’ve also seen how, worse than being ineffective, these behaviors actually serve the very structures people are trying to expose. Our strategy is different. Rather than shout, we point.

And, we know who’s watching—and who we’re writing for. For example:

• Family court judges who still believe in discretion, not distortion.

• Superior and Appellate judges who’ve seen the patterns but are bound by record.

• Federal judges and clerks who know their chambers are skimming procedural edge.

• Civil rights lawyers and constitutional conservatives who both care about procedural integrity.

• And, pro se litigants who’ve been told they don’t understand the system—when they understand it too well.

We see you.

-Mike Davis and Stetson Webster

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