Supreme Court deals setback to Muslims suing FBI over spying in an O.C. mosque

The U.S. Supreme Courtroom dealt a setback Friday to a few Muslim males in Orange County who’ve sued the FBI for spying on their mosques within the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, assaults.

In a unanimous however narrowly written opinion, the excessive court docket stated the federal government could invoke the “state secrets and techniques” privilege to dam such a lawsuit from continuing, and dominated the present regulation doesn’t authorize a choose to look at the supposedly secret data pertaining to the case to find out whether or not it could be related.

The ruling in FBI vs. Fazaga rejects a compromise set out by the ninth Circuit Courtroom of Appeals, which stated a choose performing underneath the Overseas Intelligence Surveillance Act could weigh the proof behind closed doorways. This was seen as a solution to enable the lawsuit in opposition to the FBI to proceed with out revealing intelligence on the premise for the surveillance.

However Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the court docket, stated that was a mistake.

“We conclude that Congress didn’t get rid of, curtail, or modify the state secrets and techniques privilege when it enacted” FISA, the regulation that regulates digital surveillance.

He referred to as the choice “slim.” The court docket’s opinion didn’t block or finish the long-running lawsuit, however despatched the case again to the ninth Circuit to rethink the core situation of whether or not “privileged” and secret proof is essential to the case, as the federal government maintains.

“The ninth didn’t determine these questions, and we don’t resolve them right here,” Alito stated.

UCLA regulation professor Ahilan Arulanantham, who has represented the Muslim males, stated the choice means they “can proceed to pursue their claims that the FBI spied on them due to their spiritual beliefs.”

“My shoppers and plenty of different members of Southern California’s Muslim American communities have been ready 15 years for justice,” he stated. “The choice right this moment brings us one step nearer to attaining it.”

However the ruling additionally reveals once more the power of the “state secrets and techniques” doctrine as a protect for the U.S. authorities.

On Thursday, the court docket by a 6-3 vote blocked two former CIA contractors from testifying earlier than a Polish tribunal concerning the CIA’s waterboarding and torture of supposedly “excessive worth” prisoners within the Bush administration’s warfare on terrorism. The justices stated their testimony might reveal state secrets and techniques, despite the fact that the essential details have been public data for years.

For a decade, the Justice Division underneath Presidents Obama, Trump and now Biden has insisted the lawsuit involving the Orange County mosques needs to be blocked as a result of it might reveal nationwide safety secrets and techniques.

In November, the justices sounded divided and unsure once they heard arguments within the Orange County case. On Friday, they stopped wanting saying whether or not the lawsuit might proceed, and as an alternative determined solely that the FISA compromise was inappropriate.

The case started in 2006, when the FBI in Los Angeles employed Craig Monteilh and paid him to pose as a convert to Islam. For 2 years, he recorded hundreds of hours of conversations and compiled names and telephone numbers.

When he started to speak within the mosques about violent jihad, a number of of the Muslim males reported him to the FBI. After his story was revealed, Monteilh broke with the FBI and cooperated with the American Civil Liberties Union in bringing a lawsuit in opposition to the FBI.

The lead plaintiff, Yassir Fazaga, was an imam on the Orange County Islamic Basis, a mosque in Mission Viejo. The swimsuit alleged the FBI’s so-called Operation Flex was a “dragnet surveillance” program designed to “collect data on Muslims.”

The FBI stated the intention of Operation Flex “was to find out whether or not specific people have been concerned within the recruitment and coaching of people in the US or abroad for attainable terrorist exercise.” However the FBI and U.S. attorneys didn’t clarify why they focused a number of mosques in Orange County for surveillance. That was a “state secret,” they stated.

For greater than a decade, the lawsuit has been caught at a preliminary stage within the federal courts in California. Starting with Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. in 2012, high Justice Division officers have stated the swimsuit needs to be dismissed on the grounds it might reveal nationwide safety secrets and techniques.

In 2019, the ninth Circuit Courtroom, in a 2-1 determination, devised what appeared like a compromise. It stated the judges who meet in secret to listen to the federal government’s requests to conduct “international intelligence surveillance” ought to look at the FBI’s foundation for enterprise the surveillance of the mosques and determine whether or not the swimsuit could proceed.

Legal professionals for the outgoing Trump administration in December 2020 requested the excessive court docket to take up the case and order the dismissal of the swimsuit, saying the ninth Circuit’s method “poses a considerable danger that state secrets and techniques will likely be disclosed.”