Ziglar v. Abbasi

[de officiis]

Ziglar v. Abbasi

The respondents in this case are a group of male, non-U.S. citizens, most of whom are Muslim of Middle Eastern origin who were detained after the September 11, 2001 attacks and treated as “of interest” in the government’s investigation of these events. In their original claims, the plaintiffs alleged that they were detained without notice of the charges against them or information about how they were determined to be “of interest,” that their access to counsel and the courts was interfered with, and that they were subjected to excessively harsh treatment during their detention. They also asserted that their race, ethnicity, and national origin played a determinative role in the decision to detain them. The plaintiffs sued a number of government officials and argued that the government used their status as non-citizens to detain them when the government’s real purpose was to investigate whether they were terrorists and that the conditions of their confinement violated their Constitutional rights to due process and equal protection. After a series of motions to dismiss, the district court dismissed the claims regarding the length of confinement but allowed the Constitutional claims to proceed. Both the plaintiffs and defendants appealed various aspects of that ruling.

While that appeal was pending, some of the plaintiffs settled their claims against the government and the U.S. Supreme Court decided Ashcroft v. Iqbal, which held that a complaint must allege sufficient facts to be plausible on its face and to allow a court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the claimed conduct. Based on these events, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit dismissed the length of confinement claims but remanded the conditions of confinement claims and allowed the plaintiffs to amend their complaint. The appellate court again dismissed some of the claims and allowed others to proceed.

Question

How broadly should “context” be defined for the purpose of determining whether claims arose in a “new context” in regards to holding a government official as personally liable for committing a Constitutional violation?

Are the government defendants in these cases entitled to qualified immunity from liability?

Do the injuries in these cases meet the pleading standards of Ashcroft v. Iqbal--requiring that a complaint allege sufficient facts to state a plausible claim?

https://www.oyez.org/cases/2016/15-1358

WASHINGTON — The federal government’s frantic response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, sparked renewed debate Wednesday at the Supreme Court, as justices considered whether top officials in the George W. Bush administration could be held responsible for abuses against Muslim immigrants and others rounded up after the attacks.

Conservatives on the court, citing the extraordinary peril of that time, appeared willing to give the officials legal protection from lawsuits arising from the detention policies they approved after the attacks.

But some of the more liberal justices did not appear so forgiving.

Even in a time of national emergency, government officials sometimes “can go too far,” Justice Stephen G. Breyer said. “And if they have gone too far, it is our job to say that.”

The case centers on the government’s roundup and mistreatment of 762 men who were in the United States illegally — mainly Muslims from Arab and South Asian nations — in the days and weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Not one of the men was found to have had any connection to the attacks or to terrorism, yet some were held in detention centers in Brooklyn and New Jersey for as long as eight months under harsh conditions and with sporadic access to family or lawyers.

Many prisoners were kept in tiny cells in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, deprived of sleep, given “meager and barely edible” food and strip-searched regularly. Investigators later determined that guards in Brooklyn, in particular, beat prisoners and threw them against walls, taunting them as “terrorists.”

Eight of the former prisoners are seeking to personally sue former Bush administration officials — including John D. Ashcroft, who was the attorney general, and Robert S. Mueller III, who was F.B.I. director — for creating the policies they claim led to the abuse. Six of the former detainees are Muslim, one is Hindu and one is Buddhist.

In seeking to head off the prospect of additional, “follow on” attacks, Mr. Ashcroft and the Justice Department approved a “hold until cleared” policy for the prisoners. That meant the F.B.I. had to affirmatively declare a prisoner was not a terrorist threat before he was released to face standard immigration proceedings.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/us/p ... .html?_r=0

[Okeefenokee]

non-US citizens. Fewer protections.

[Speaker to Animals]

I remember when some of that stuff happened. It was actually pretty egregious. I don't have a problem deporting foreign nationals we believe are connected to terrorism, but this was something else.