Case: 20-50399 Document: 00515811147 Page: 1 Date Filed: 04/07/2021 United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit FILED April 7, 2021 No. 20-50399 Lyle W. Cayce Clerk David Jonaton Cambranis, Plaintiff—Appellant, versus Antony Blinken, Secretary, U.S. Department of State; Attorney General of the United States, Defendants—Appellees. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas USDC No. 5:19-CV-238 Before Stewart, Higginson, and Wilson, Circuit Judges. Stephen A. Higginson, Circuit Judge: Appellant David Cambranis appeals the district court’s dismissal of his amended complaint for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. We AFFIRM. I. Background According to his amended complaint, Cambranis was born on January 4, 1979, in Del Rio, Texas, when his mother went into labor while attending a colleague’s birthday party. His mother, Eva Lopez Escobar, is a Mexican citizen who was living at the time in Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila, Mexico. Case: 20-50399 Document: 00515811147 Page: 2 Date Filed: 04/07/2021 No. 20-50399 Cambranis alleges that on January 22, 1979, his mother registered his birth in Mexico and wrongly reported that he was born in Ciudad Acuña. On July 27, 1981, Ms. Escobar filed a delayed birth certificate for Cambranis with the Texas Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, recording that he was born in Texas. The Texas birth certificate included an attestation from a witness who claimed to have attended Cambranis’s birth in Del Rio. More recently, Cambranis has filed six passport applications with the United States Department of State (“DOS”), based on his purported status as a national of the United States. Each has been denied. In its denial letters, DOS describes that Cambranis has not met his burden to prove his U.S. citizenship or nationality and notes the existence of the Mexican birth record as contradicting his claim of having been born in the United States. Cambranis filed his first application on May 15, 2009, which was denied on September 22, 2010. His most recent application was filed on March 17, 2017 and was denied on December 6, 2018. On March 11, 2019, Cambranis filed his initial complaint in this case, which challenged DOS’s denial of his passport applications and sought a declaration of U.S. citizenship pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1503(a). 1 The Government moved to dismiss the complaint for lack of subject- matter jurisdiction. The Government argued that the five-year statute of 1 Section 1503(a) states, in relevant part: “If any person who is within the United States claims a right or privilege as a national of the United States and is denied such right or privilege by any department or independent agency, or official thereof, upon the ground that he is not a national of the United States, such person may institute an action” under 28 U.S.C. § 2201 “for a judgment declaring him to be a national of the United States.” 8 U.S.C. § 1503(a). The text of the statute further describes that an action under § 1503(a) is not available in connection …
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