In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that several high-ranking government officials cannot be sued for their official actions in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The opinion, authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy and joined by the court’s conservative justices, upholds long-standing immunity protections given to government officers for their official duties. The U.S. high court overturned a ruling that Javaid Iqbal, who was held more than a year after the attacks, could sue former Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller.
In the weeks after the September 11 attacks, U.S. authorities detained 762 noncitizens, almost all Muslims or Arabs. Many of those held at the federal prison in Brooklyn suffered abuse, the U.S. Justice Department’s inspector general has found.
The Bush administration said that Ashcroft and Mueller have immunity, that they should not be held personally liable and that the lawsuit against them should be dismissed.
Ashcroft and Mueller argued they have qualified legal immunity because any misconduct was done by lower-level officials and they had no personal involvement in or knowledge of the alleged abuse.
The issue before the Supreme Court involved only whether Iqbal’s lawsuit against Ashcroft and Mueller could continue and did not address his claims of mistreatment against other lower-ranking current and former government officials.
Iqbal sued about 30 other current or former U.S. government officials, including the warden at the detention facility and the director of the federal Bureau of Prisons. He seeks unspecified damages.
Iqbal was arrested for having false Social Security papers. He pleaded guilty in 2002, was released in 2003 and deported to Pakistan. The lawsuit was filed in 2004.
The U.S. government paid $300,000 to settle with Iqbal’s co-plaintiff and fellow detainee Ehab Elmaghraby, an Egyptian.
(Source: Reuters)
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5 Responses
1. It is very rare for a civil servant to be personally liable for carrying out his job. The problem with suing the government for damages is that it is hard to get a big judgement against the Treasury, which is a problem since tort lawyers are paid on a commission basis. Discrimination pays better than other claims. Torturing someone for a non-discriminatory motive (e.g. you hate the guy for a reason other than race, such as he blows up buildings with your friends in them), doesn’t put bread on the lawyers table to the same extent as a discrimination claim.
2. The case was on a motion to dismiss for failure to state a valid claim. Under such motions everything the plaintiff alledges is assumed to be true. What was decided that even if he was tortured because of ethnicity (illegal) rather than criminality (still illegal but non-discriminatory), he wouldn’t have a legal basis to sue the civil servants personally.
Should put another nail in Obama’s coffin thinking about prosecuting Bush admin officials for carrying out their official duties.
I can’t believe that there were actually 4 Supreme Court judges who did want to prosecute!! The whole judicial system is left wing.
#3–the federal judiciary tends to be right wing (Carter had few appointments, and since 1980 we’ve had 20 years of Republican appointments, versus only 8+ of Democratic appointments).
You might be confused because New York judges are elected, and therefore tend to be radical liberals since that is what people in New York vote for.
I don’t quite understand this. How come the nazis ysv did get prosecuted, and hung if they only did their job?
is torturing ok,but killing not ok – if all you are doing is your official job.
I wonder whats next