The FBI Wrongly Raided This Family’s Home. A Bipartisan Group of Lawmakers Wants the Supreme Court To Step In.
One of the more common mantras you hear about the federal court system is that its judges should not be making law—aka legislating from the bench—but should be interpreting and applying the law as it was written. A new case that may go before the Supreme Court would serve as a particularly loud reminder of that.
A bipartisan group of congresspeople—including Sens. Rand Paul (R–Ky.), Ron Wyden (D–Ore.), and Cynthia Lummis (R–Wyo.), along with Reps. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.), Nikema Williams (D–Ga.), Harriet Hageman (R–Wyo.), and Dan Bishop (R–N.C.)—are urging the high court to take up the case, which centers around a family whose home was wrongly raided by the FBI in the middle of the night and who were then denied the right to sue for damages.*
But the reason the family was denied was particularly perverse, the congresspeople wrote in a recent brief to the high court, arguing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit turned the relevant law on its head when it blocked Curtrina Martin, the plaintiff, from suing.
On an early morning in 2017, Martin and her then-fiance, Hilliard Toi Cliatt, were awoken by the FBI detonating a flash grenade in their home and ripping their door from its hinges. The agents then made their way to their bedroom and found the couple hiding in the closet, where they had retreated in fear; an officer dragged Cliatt out and handcuffed him, while another pointed his gun and screamed at Martin, who says she fell on a rack in the rapidly unfolding mayhem. Her 7-year-old son was in his room, and she says her mind went to a dark place.
“I don’t know if there is a proper word that I can use” to capture the fear she felt, Martin told me this summer.
The FBI would not find who they came for, because the suspect didn’t live there, nor did he have any relation to Martin or Cliatt. When Martin sued, the 11th Circuit not only gave immunity to Lawrence Guerra, the leader of the SWAT raid, but the judges also said her claims could not proceed under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), the legislation that allows people to bring various state torts against the federal government.
Richly ironic, however, is that the FTCA was revised in the 1970s with a law enforcement proviso that greenlights suits against the federal government for intentional torts committed by federa
Article from Reason.com
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