WASHINGTON − The Supreme Court sent a case involving an Atlanta family seeking to sue the FBI for raiding their house back to a lower court for more consideration, but left unresolved the broader question of how much protection from lawsuits the courts should give law enforcement officers mistakes on the job.
Trina Martin, her son Gabe and her partner Toi Cliatt awoke one morning in October 2017 to what she called the “monstrous noise” of a half-dozen FBI agents barging into their home with guns drawn. But the Special Weapons and Tactics team was at the wrong home, 436 feet from a similar beige, split-level house where a suspected gang member lived.
Federal courts dismissed the family’s lawsuit for compensation over the mistake by ruling courts shouldn’t second-guess law enforcement officers.
The Supreme Court unanimously overturned the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissal of the case on June 12 and ordered the appeals court to take another look at whether the lawsuit is justified.
Martin family looks forward to continuing fight against FBI: lawyer
Patrick Jaicomo, a lawyer at the Institute for Justice who represented the family, said in a statement the court let the case continue for “the FBI’s botched raid of their home.” He said the family looks forward to continuing their fight.
“The Court’s decision today acknowledged how far the circuit courts have strayed from the purpose of the Federal Tort Claims Act, which is to ensure remedies to the victims of federal harms − intentional and negligent alike,” Jaicomo said.
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court that there are several exceptions to whether law enforcement officers can be sued under the Federal Tort Claims Act but that the appeals court was “mistaken” in how it weighed them in dismissing the case.
Gorsuch wrote that if the appeals court finds FBI doesn’t deserve to be shielded for its discretionary judgment in the raid, the appeals court still needs to determine whether a private individual would be liable for actions the authorities took.
Courts struggle with how to shield police from lawsuits: Sotomayor
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson agreed with the decision. They noted that courts have struggled to determine what level of “judgment or choice” in a police action should protect officers from lawsuits but said officials shouldn’t be shielded from “careless” or “unconstitutional” conduct.
“We readily acknowledge that different lower courts have taken different views of the discretionary-function exception,” Sotomayor wrote, but those questions range beyond what the justices were considering in the Atlanta case.
Martin, her son who was 7 years old at the time of the raid, and Cliatt each feared they could be killed when the SWAT team burst noisily into their house. The ordeal lasted about five minutes before the FBI agents realized their mistake and headed out to the correct house.
The FBI agents described their meticulous planning to search the house by locating it with GPS during daylight, taking pictures and drawing up a tactical plan.
Congress changed the Federal Tort Claims Act in 1974 to allow lawsuits against law enforcement after two wrong-house raids the year before. But the government argued that judges shouldn’t second-guess agents doing their jobs. A District Court and the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the case by finding the agents were immune.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court orders more review of wrong-house lawsuit against FBI
