KLOS v. PAULSON
The Presidential $1 Coin Act Litigation, 2008–2009
Stanley Louis Klos v. Henry M. Paulson, Jr., Secretary of the Treasury
United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida, No. 8:08-cv-843-T-23TBM
United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, No. 08-14645
Executive Summary
In 2008, I filed Stanley Louis Klos v. Henry M. Paulson, Jr., Secretary of the Treasury, in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida. The case arose from the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005 and presented a historical, statutory, and jurisdictional dispute concerning the ten men who served from 1781 through 1788 as President of the United States in Congress Assembled under the Articles of Confederation.
The Articles of Confederation, ratified by all thirteen states, established a federal government styled “The United States of America.” Beginning with Samuel Huntington in 1781 and ending with Cyrus Griffin in 1788, ten men served as President of the United States in Congress Assembled before the government established under the Constitution of 1787 commenced operations in 1789.
The Presidential $1 Coin Act, however, established a statutory presidential coin sequence beginning with George Washington. I contended that excluding the pre-1789 presiding officers from the program reinforced the widespread public impression that the governmental history of the United States began with Washington’s presidency in 1789.
Proceeding pro se, I sought declaratory relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2201 and mandamus relief under 28 U.S.C. § 1361. The complaint asked the federal court to determine whether the ten Presidents who served under the Articles of Confederation fell within the meaning of “Presidents of the United States” for purposes of the Presidential $1 Coin Act and to direct the Secretary of the Treasury accordingly.
On July 14, 2008, United States District Judge Steven D. Merryday dismissed the action with prejudice for failure to state a claim. The District Court concluded that the Presidential $1 Coin Act neither required nor authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to issue coins depicting the ten pre-1789 Presidents. Judge Merryday nevertheless wrote that my effort to correct what I regarded as a widespread historical misconception was “laudable,” adding that the remedy, if any, lay with the legislature.
I appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
On January 29, 2009, a three-judge panel consisting of Judges Gerald Bard Tjoflat, Joel F. Dubina, and Frank M. Hull vacated the District Court’s judgment. The appellate court did not decide the merits of my historical or statutory argument. Instead, it held that the allegations in my complaint failed to establish the Article III standing necessary for a federal court to exercise jurisdiction.
Because standing is jurisdictional, the Eleventh Circuit held that the District Court should not have dismissed the action with prejudice. It vacated the July 14, 2008 judgment and remanded the matter with instructions that the complaint be dismissed without prejudice. The District Court complied with that mandate on April 1, 2009.
The result therefore was procedural rather than substantive. The appeal succeeded in overturning the prejudicial form of the dismissal, but it did not produce a ruling in favor of, or against, the underlying historical claim that the pre-1789 Presidents should be treated as Presidents of the United States for purposes of the coin statute.
The Eleventh Circuit stated:
“Accordingly, we do not address the merits of Klos’s claims.”
Three Separate Questions Raised by the Litigation
The case involved three questions that should be kept distinct:
- The historical question: What was the governmental and constitutional status of the men who presided over the United States in Congress Assembled from 1781 through 1788?
- The statutory question: What did Congress mean by “Presidents of the United States” in the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005, particularly when the statutory sequence expressly began with George Washington?
- The jurisdictional question: Had I alleged a concrete and particularized injury sufficient to establish Article III standing and give the federal courts jurisdiction to decide the dispute?
The Eleventh Circuit decided only the third question.
The Ten Presidents at Issue
| President of the United States in Congress Assembled | Service |
|---|---|
| Samuel Huntington | 1781 |
| Thomas McKean | 1781 |
| John Hanson | 1781–1782 |
| Elias Boudinot | 1782–1783 |
| Thomas Mifflin | 1783–1784 |
| Richard Henry Lee | 1784–1785 |
| John Hancock | 1785–1786 |
| Nathaniel Gorham | 1786 |
| Arthur St. Clair | 1787 |
| Cyrus Griffin | 1788 |
My original pleadings frequently referred to these men as the “Constitution of 1777 Presidents.” That was advocacy terminology used in the litigation to emphasize my view that the Articles of Confederation functioned as the first ratified federal constitution of the United States. In this retrospective account, I use the historically more familiar designation “Presidents of the United States in Congress Assembled.”
Origins of the Dispute
Congress enacted the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005, Public Law 109-145, on December 22, 2005. The Act amended 31 U.S.C. § 5112 and created a series of circulating dollar coins “honoring each of the Presidents of the United States.” The statute directed that the presidential designs be issued sequentially and stated that the program would begin with President George Washington.
My objection was historical as well as statutory. For many years I had researched, collected, published, lectured, and exhibited primary-source material from the period 1774–1789. I believed that the popular convention of calling George Washington the first President of the United States, without qualification, obscured the earlier continental governments and the presiding officers who served them.
The litigation sought to use the language of the Coin Act as a vehicle for obtaining a judicial interpretation of that disputed historical and statutory question.
Case Chronology
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| May 1, 2008 | Complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. |
| June 19, 2008 | Secretary Paulson moved to dismiss the complaint. |
| July 2008 | I filed a response opposing dismissal. |
| July 14, 2008 | Judge Steven D. Merryday dismissed the case with prejudice for failure to state a claim. |
| August 12, 2008 | The District Court denied reconsideration; I filed a notice of appeal. |
| September 29, 2008 | Appellant’s brief and record excerpts were served. |
| January 29, 2009 | Eleventh Circuit vacated and remanded because the complaint failed to establish Article III standing. |
| April 1, 2009 | District Court dismissed the complaint without prejudice pursuant to the Eleventh Circuit mandate. |
| May 6, 2009 | I wrote Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd explaining that I would pursue legislative recognition rather than refile the lawsuit. |
The Complaint
The complaint sought two forms of relief. Count I requested a declaration that the ten men who served as President of the United States in Congress Assembled were “Presidents of the United States” within the meaning of the Presidential $1 Coin Act and that the statute required the Treasury Secretary to issue coins bearing their images. Count II sought mandamus relief compelling the Secretary to issue the coins.
The complaint identified the ten Presidents as Samuel Huntington, Thomas McKean, John Hanson, Elias Boudinot, Thomas Mifflin, Richard Henry Lee, John Hancock, Nathaniel Gorham, Arthur St. Clair, and Cyrus Griffin.
The Government’s Motion to Dismiss
The United States argued that the Presidential $1 Coin Act did not require the Secretary to issue coins for the Presidents who served under the Articles of Confederation. The government relied principally on the statutory structure and the provision directing that issuance begin with George Washington.
I opposed dismissal and argued that the Act’s references to honoring “each” President and “each of the Nation’s past Presidents” created an ambiguity that should be resolved by examining the governmental history of the United States before 1789.
The District Court’s July 14, 2008 Decision
Judge Merryday rejected my statutory interpretation and dismissed the complaint with prejudice. The court concluded that, when the Act was read as a whole, Congress did not direct the Treasury Secretary to mint coins for the pre-1789 presiding officers.
“The plaintiff’s wish to correct what he regards as a widespread misconception about those who served the nation under the Articles of Confederation is laudable. However, the plaintiff’s remedy, if any, lies in the legislature.”
I moved for reconsideration and subsequently appealed.
The Appeal to the Eleventh Circuit
The appeal was docketed as No. 08-14645 in the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. My appellate brief continued to argue that the statutory term “President” required judicial interpretation and that the District Court had dismissed the case prematurely.
Archival note: the cover of my 2008 pro se appellate brief and record excerpts mistakenly identified the court as the “United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.” The case was, in fact, filed and decided in the Eleventh Circuit. The erroneous heading is preserved in surviving copies of the original brief as part of the historical record.
The Eleventh Circuit’s January 29, 2009 Decision
The Eleventh Circuit did not adopt the District Court’s merits analysis. Instead, it held that federal jurisdiction was absent because the complaint did not allege an injury in fact sufficient to establish Article III standing.
The panel explained that standing is a jurisdictional requirement that an appellate court must address even when the issue was not raised below. Because the complaint did not establish standing, the District Court lacked jurisdiction to enter a dismissal with prejudice on the merits.
The Eleventh Circuit therefore vacated the judgment and remanded the matter with instructions to dismiss without prejudice.
Eleventh Circuit disposition:
“VACATED AND REMANDED.”
The court also stated: “Accordingly, we do not address the merits of Klos’s claims.”
What the Appellate Decision Did, and Did Not, Establish
The appellate ruling is sometimes easy to mischaracterize in either direction. It did not validate my interpretation of the Presidential $1 Coin Act, and it did not adjudicate the historical status of the Presidents of the United States in Congress Assembled. It also did not affirm the District Court’s merits ruling.
Its holding was narrower: my complaint, as pleaded, failed to establish Article III standing. Because the federal courts lacked jurisdiction, the dismissal had to be without prejudice rather than with prejudice.
A new action theoretically could have been filed if a plaintiff could allege and ultimately prove the concrete and particularized injury required for standing. Success on standing, however, would only have opened the courthouse door. The plaintiff would still have faced the difficult statutory question created by Congress’s decision to make the coin sequence begin with George Washington.
Why I Did Not Refile the Case
The dismissal without prejudice left open the possibility of filing a new action if I could properly establish Article III standing. By the spring of 2009, however, circumstances had changed dramatically, both for me personally and for the country.
The litigation had begun before the financial crisis of 2008 reached its full severity. By spring 2009, the United States and much of the world were confronting the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression. Years of risky mortgage lending, lax underwriting standards, inadequate regulatory oversight, excessive leverage, and widespread assumptions that housing values would continue to rise had contributed to a housing bubble whose collapse destabilized financial institutions and credit markets. The consequences extended into 2009 through bank failures and restructurings, collapsing asset values, foreclosures, business failures, unemployment, and severe disruption throughout the global economy.
President Barack Obama had been in office for less than three months when the District Court entered the appellate mandate on April 1, 2009. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and the new administration were attempting to stabilize the financial system, restore credit markets, and address the banking and housing crises. Whatever importance I attached to the historical questions raised by the case, I did not believe this was an appropriate time to initiate another federal lawsuit against the Treasury Secretary and require the government to devote additional resources to defending it.
The same crisis demanded my own attention and resources. I was an entrepreneur, real-estate investor, historian, publisher, and father supporting a large family. Renewed pro se federal litigation would have required substantial additional time and expense precisely when protecting businesses, investments, property, and family finances had become a more immediate responsibility.
There was also a substantial legal obstacle. A new complaint might have alleged a more concrete economic injury connected with my historical research, publications, exhibitions, educational materials, medallions, cards, posters, and related work. Establishing standing, however, would have resolved only the threshold jurisdictional question. I would then have faced the much more difficult task of persuading a federal court that Congress had imposed a legally enforceable duty on the Treasury Secretary to include pre-1789 Presidents in a coin program whose statutory sequence expressly began with George Washington.
I therefore decided against filing a second federal action.
That decision was contemporaneously documented. In a May 6, 2009 letter to Senator Christopher Dodd, then Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, I explained that the appellate ruling left an opportunity to refile addressing standing, but that I had decided instead to follow Judge Merryday’s suggestion and pursue recognition legislatively.
From Litigation to Legislation
The proposed U.S. Founding Half-Dollar Coin Act was developed as a legislative alternative to renewed litigation. The proposal sought to honor the presiding officers of the Continental Congress and the United States in Congress Assembled, together with the early national capitals associated with their service.
The proposal was sent to President Barack Obama, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and members of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. The May 6, 2009 letter to Chairman Christopher Dodd expressly stated that legislative relief had been chosen over refiling Klos v. Paulson.
Read the May 6, 2009 letter to Senator Christopher Dodd
Subsequent Judicial Treatment
The case later appeared in an unrelated 2012 opinion by Judge Merryday, Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc. v. Unidentified Shipwrecked Vessel or Vessels. In discussing the priority courts must give to standing and subject-matter jurisdiction, Judge Merryday used Klos v. Paulson as an example.
Judge Merryday made clear that he continued to regard the underlying statutory claim as meritless because the Coin Act directed the presidential sequence to begin with George Washington. At the same time, he recounted that the Eleventh Circuit had required the standing question to receive priority and had vacated his earlier merits dismissal. That later discussion reinforces the procedural lesson of the case: a federal court must establish jurisdiction before deciding the merits, even when a judge considers the merits straightforward.
Read the 2012 Odyssey Marine decision discussing Klos v. Paulson
Primary Case Record
The original CoinAct page accumulated the pleadings, exhibits, correspondence, historical charts, medallion designs, and advocacy material over many years. That material is preserved as the historical record of the litigation, while this page provides a cleaner retrospective account of what the courts actually decided.
- Complaint filed May 1, 2008: declaratory and mandamus claims against Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr.
- Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss, June 19, 2008.
- Plaintiff’s Response to Motion to Dismiss, July 2008.
- District Court Order, July 14, 2008: dismissal with prejudice.
- Motion for Reconsideration and August 12, 2008 denial.
- Notice of Appeal, August 12, 2008.
- Appellant’s Brief and Record Excerpts, September 2008.
- Eleventh Circuit Opinion, January 29, 2009: vacated and remanded on standing.
- District Court Order, April 1, 2009: complaint dismissed without prejudice.
View the original long-form CoinAct case archive
Historical Exhibits and Coin Concepts
The litigation was part of a broader educational project concerning the governmental evolution of the United Colonies and United States from 1774 through 1789. The exhibits used in the case included historical documents, medallion concepts, proposed coin designs, and primary-source evidence relating to the powers and activities of the early congressional presidents.
View the presidential coin and medallion concepts
Video Record
Retrospective Assessment
Nearly two decades later, I regard Klos v. Paulson as one episode in a much larger effort to restore the governmental history of 1774–1789 to the national narrative. The litigation did not secure a judicial ruling on the historical question I wanted the courts to address. It did, however, clarify the procedural posture of the dispute and ultimately reinforced my decision to pursue the subject through scholarship, primary-source exhibitions, publications, education, and legislation rather than renewed litigation.
The historical question and the legal question remain distinct. One may argue that the Presidents of the United States in Congress Assembled deserve substantially greater public recognition without asserting that the Presidential $1 Coin Act legally required the Treasury Secretary to include them in a statutory series that Congress directed to begin with George Washington.
That distinction is the central lesson of the case.
Editorial note, 2026: This page is a retrospective reconstruction of the original 2008–2009 case page. It corrects several errors in the earlier web presentation, including references to the “Fifth Circuit” where the court was the Eleventh Circuit, and an incorrect date formerly associated with the appellate decision. The Eleventh Circuit opinion was issued January 29, 2009. The District Court entered the mandated dismissal without prejudice on April 1, 2009. Original pleadings and advocacy materials may contain period terminology, typographical errors, legal arguments, and historical characterizations that are preserved as part of the archival record.
Stanley Y. Klos
Independent Scholar and Historian
Historic.us Corporation
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