On June 1, 2022, the U.S. District Court for the SD of Florida denied Mr. Olajide’s request for an immediate hearing to obtain a preliminary injunction. From a review of Mr. Olajide’s Complaint, it appears that he is a Nigerian national, residing in Florida (Miami-Dade). He is suing a variety of individuals in California, including the local Contra Costa County Court, and Ms. Cheatham, the mother of his child, in Arizona. On or about June 21, 2018, Ms. Cheatham filed paperwork in the Contra Costa County Court under the UCCJEA that would, according to Mr. Olajide, prevent him from traveling to and from Nigeria with their child. He alleged that Ms. Cheatham actually abducted their child from his home in Florida, taking the child to California, and then accused him of child abduction. He alleges that the clerk of the court accepted the filing fee and issued paperwork under the UCCJEA, but it should not have, and doing so, violated Mr. Olajide’s legal rights pursuant to the U.S. constitution (including due process, equal protection, freedom from search and seizure, among other things). Apparently in November 2018, the court in California granted Ms. Cheatham sole legal and physical custody of the child and prohibited Mr. Olajide’s travel with the child. Mr. Olajide claimed that he started no less than 7 state court proceedings to secure a right to be able to travel with his child. His complaint asserts that the UCCJEA should be declared unconstitutional.

Setting aside the standard for a preliminary injunction, the District Court first explored whether Mr. Olajide had standing to bring his motion request, and concluded he did not. “[T]o establish standing, a ‘plaintiff must have (1) suffered an injury in fact, (2) that is fairly traceable to the challenged conduct of the defendant, and (3) that is likely to be redressed by a favorable judicial decision.'” An injury-in-fact is “an invasion of a judicially cognizable interest which is (a) concrete and particularized and (b) actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical.”

Mr. Olajide filed a pre-enforcement, constitutional challenge to a state statute (the UCCJEA). Therefore, the injury-in-fact requirement must be established by a “realistic danger of sustaining direct injury as a result of the statute’s operation or enforcement.” He can prove this by one of 3 ways – he was threatened with application of the statute, application of the statute is likely, or there is a credible threat of the statute’s application. There must be a causal connection between his injury and the alleged illegal conduct. It must also be likely that his injury would be redressed by the court granting his motion, not merely speculative. In this case, Mr. Olajide requested an injunction to “prevent” state law enforcement officers from confining him, causing serious bodily harm, killing, publicly charging him with ‘abduction’ in anticipation of a flight he was to take to Arizona on June 2, 2022. But, the court concluded that he has not alleged that there had been any enforcement of the UCCJEA judgment to date. Therefore, the court denied his request.