COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA Present: Judges Malveaux, Ortiz and Causey UNPUBLISHED DERRICK A. EDWARDS MEMORANDUM OPINION* v. Record No. 0583-22-3 PER CURIAM DECEMBER 6, 2022 GLENN YOUNGKIN, GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA AND JASON MIYARES, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF VIRGINIA FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF WISE COUNTY John C. Kilgore, Judge (Derrick A. Edwards, on brief), pro se. No brief or argument for appellees. Derrick A. Edwards (“Edwards”), acting pro se, filed a petition in the Wise County Circuit Court seeking a writ of quo warranto against Governor Glenn Youngkin and Attorney General Jason Miyares (“appellees”). Edwards alleged that these newly elected officials were unfit to hold public office. In response, appellees filed a demurrer and motion to dismiss. On the pleadings, and without a hearing on the merits, the circuit court dismissed Edwards’s petition. He appealed. After examining Edwards’s brief and the record in this case, the panel unanimously holds that oral argument is unnecessary because “the appeal is wholly without merit.” Code § 17.1-403(ii)(a); Rule 5A:27(a). Accordingly, we affirm the circuit court for the following reasons. I. BACKGROUND “Under settled principles of appellate review, we view the evidence in the light most favorable to . . . the part[ies] prevailing below, and we grant to [them] ‘all reasonable inferences * Pursuant to Code § 17.1-413, this opinion is not designated for publication. fairly deducible therefrom.’” Rhodes v. Lang, 66 Va. App. 702, 704 (2016) (citation omitted) (quoting Anderson v. Anderson, 29 Va. App. 673, 678 (1999)). Edwards filed a petition for a writ of quo warranto in the Wise County Circuit Court, contesting appellees’ qualifications to hold public office. Specifically, he alleged that pursuant to the Virginia Constitution, Article 5, Sections 3 and 15, appellees are not United States citizens, because neither was born in Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, or “any other territory or enclave within federal jurisdiction.” Appellees filed a demurrer and motion to dismiss. In addition to asserting that they are both “United States citizens under federal law,” appellees alleged that the writ of quo warranto was not available to Edwards because he failed to make use of “a proceeding to contest the election” as required by Code § 8.01-636(4). On the pleadings, and without a hearing on the merits, the circuit court dismissed Edwards’s petition by final order entered March 16, 2022. The court specifically found that the allegations contained in Edwards’s petition were “legally insufficient to authorize the issuance of the writ” and that “the eligibility of the [d]efendants to hold public office could have been addressed in a proceeding to contest their elections, and therefore cannot now be challenged by way of a petition for a writ of quo warranto.” This appeal followed. II. ANALYSIS Edwards challenges the appellees’ qualifications to hold public office because, according to his reading of certain statutes and the United States Constitution, neither of them is a U.S. citizen. He also assigns error to the circuit court’s finding that he could have contested …
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