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| The home at the heart of an FBI raid; (Inset) Curtrina Martin, flanked by her partner, Hilliard Toi Cliatt, and her son, Gabe (Institute for Justice) |
The U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) this morning is hearing oral arguments in the case of an Atlanta woman who was the victim of what amounted to a mistaken home invasion . . . conducted by FBI agents. Curtrina Martin vs. The United States could be filed under the heading: "What happens when incompetent law enforcement officers (LEOs) go to the wrong house, violently break and enter, while threatening the occupants with guns. Should the victims of such a traumatizing event be entitled to damages, even if the officers apparently made an "honest mistake"?
This scenario hits close to home here in the Legal Schnauzer household. In fact, my wife Carol and I (she also is known in these pages as Mrs. Schnauzer) have experienced a frightfully similar event. We know what Curtrina Martin means when she says occupants of her home that day "will never be the same" after being exposed to the fallout from a mix-up by FBI agents, who apparently were intending to raid a nearby house. We will have more on our experience in upcoming posts, but our focus today is on Ms. Martin's efforts to achieve justice at the nation's highest court after being denied by two lower courts that, in our view, issued rulings of dubious merit.
What issues are at stake in Martin vs. The United States? This is from an overview of the case from the ACLU of the District of Columbia:
Case Summary:
Curtrina Martin and her partner were injured and terrorized during a
violent pre-dawn FBI raid on their suburban Atlanta home in 2017, all
because the FBI agents went to the wrong address. Fifty years ago, in
response to similar wrong-house raids, Congress enacted the
"law-enforcement proviso" in the Federal Tort Claims Act (“FTCA”). That
provision, which enables people to sue the government for "assault,
battery, false imprisonment, false arrest, abuse of process, or
malicious prosecution" by "investigative or law enforcement officers of
the United States Government," ensures that people like Ms. Martin can go to court to seek a remedy for the harms the government inflicted
on them.
After the trial and appellate courts held that Ms. Martin's case
could not proceed, the Supreme Court agreed to review it to consider the
proper reading of the "law-enforcement proviso," which is a critical
tool for holding the federal government accountable when federal
officers injure people through unconstitutional physical force or
arrests.
Together
with the National ACLU, the ACLU of Georgia, Public Accountability, and
the Cato Institute, we filed an amicus brief to argue that
"law-enforcement proviso" claims cannot be defeated by the government's
argument that officials were acting in an area in which they had
"discretion." We explain why the government's argument fails both as a
matter of statutory interpretation and because the government never has
"discretion" to commit a constitutional violation. Further, we argue
that the Court should not accept the government's proposal to import
into the FTCA a version of "qualified immunity"— the problematic rule
(which we have opposed in a number of other cases) that officers'
actions cannot result in liability unless their actions were not just
unconstitutional but in violation of "clearly established" law. This
unnecessarily high barrier to holding officials accountable dilutes the
force of constitutional rights and has no basis in text, history, or
policy.
Pro Bono Law Firm(s)
Public Accountability, Cato Institute
Date filed
March 14, 2025
