Yellowdogtexan
06-17-2008, 11:22 AM
Again, the Constitution was not rendered moot by Sept. 11 and there are a couple of cases where people who were illegally held by Ashcroft and company are suing. The bushies are trying to get these cases dismissed and the courts have ruled against the bush administration. Now the SCOTUS has agree to hear one of these cases. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/washington/17scotus.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=washington&adxnnlx=1213715061-OpbXmn4xCgGxM0yWWe4rgA— The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to decide whether top government officials can be sued for damages by the Muslim men who were rounded up and imprisoned under harsh conditions in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The case is an appeal by the Bush administration on behalf of John D. Ashcroft, who at the time was attorney general, and Robert S. Mueller III, then as now the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The federal appeals court in Manhattan, in a pretrial decision last June, rejected the claims of immunity raised by the two officials, as well as by other defendants, including the former head of the Bureau of Prisons and the former warden of the Metropolitan Detention Center, where many of the men were held. The lower-ranking officials also appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court, but the justices took no action on their petitions on Monday.
The lawsuit was filed by two men, Javaid Iqbal, a Pakistani, and Ehad Elmaghraby, an Egyptian, both of whom were deported after months of confinement in a section of the Brooklyn prison known as Admax-Shu, which stands for administrative maximum special housing unit. Mr. Elmaghraby settled his claims for a $300,000 payment from the government and is no longer in the case.
Mr. Iqbal, who has not settled, was a 33-year-old cable television installer on Long Island at the time of his arrest on Nov. 2, 2001. He lived in Hicksville with his wife, a United States citizen, and had an application pending for a green card. He was charged with document fraud for using a Social Security card that belonged to someone else.
Mr. Iqbal pleaded guilty after several months of confinement in the special unit, where he was subjected to daily body-cavity searches, sometimes several times a day, as well as to beatings and to extremes of hot and cold. He was kept in solitary confinement with the lights in his cell constantly on. He lost 40 pounds during six months in the special unit, before he was placed in the general prison population.
Mr. Iqbal’s lawsuit maintains that he was treated as a “high interest” prisoner solely because of his religion and national origin, under policies and procedures directed by Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Mueller and carried out by the other defendants. The suit also maintains that the conditions of confinement in the special unit violated minimal constitutional standards, of which the defendants should have been aware.
Although Mr. Iqbal is now the sole plaintiff in his case, the Supreme Court’s decision will affect another lawsuit that raises similar claims on behalf of seven named plaintiffs and a class of hundreds of others. That case, Turkmen v. Ashcroft, was argued before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in February.
In refusing the defendants’ request to dismiss the Iqbal case, the Second Circuit found that the accusations, although not yet proven, were at least “plausible.” That was sufficient to permit Mr. Iqbal’s lawyers to proceed to pretrial discovery to establish the facts, Judge Jon O. Newman wrote for the appeals court.
The government’s appeal maintains that the case against the two high officials should have been dismissed because it was based on nothing but “bare and conclusory allegations” and lacked evidence that the two condoned or even knew about the treatment Mr. Iqbal alleges to have occurred.
The standard for allowing the case to go forward should be higher than mere plausibility, the government said, pointing to recent Supreme Court decisions, including one in an antitrust case last year, that raised the standard for the evidence that plaintiffs must provide at the initial stage in order to withstand a motion to dismiss their lawsuit.
The government’s brief said the “vital importance” of the case, Ashcroft v. Iqbal, No. 07-1015, was “amplified in the context of high-ranking officials charged with responding to an extraordinary national-security crisis like the September 11 attacks.”
In his opinion for the appeals court last June, Judge Newman discounted the relevance of the Sept. 11 context for the rights that Mr. Iqbal was asserting. “The strength of our system of constitutional rights derives from the steadfast protection of those rights in normal and unusual times,” he wrote.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the Supreme Court majority last week in the decision on the rights of the Guantánamo detainees, expressed a similar sentiment when he said that “the laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.”One plaintiff has already settled for $300,000 for having his rights violated. The goverment is worried about these cases going to trial. Kennedy's majority opinion has some language that is not good for Aschroft or Mueller.
The case is an appeal by the Bush administration on behalf of John D. Ashcroft, who at the time was attorney general, and Robert S. Mueller III, then as now the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The federal appeals court in Manhattan, in a pretrial decision last June, rejected the claims of immunity raised by the two officials, as well as by other defendants, including the former head of the Bureau of Prisons and the former warden of the Metropolitan Detention Center, where many of the men were held. The lower-ranking officials also appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court, but the justices took no action on their petitions on Monday.
The lawsuit was filed by two men, Javaid Iqbal, a Pakistani, and Ehad Elmaghraby, an Egyptian, both of whom were deported after months of confinement in a section of the Brooklyn prison known as Admax-Shu, which stands for administrative maximum special housing unit. Mr. Elmaghraby settled his claims for a $300,000 payment from the government and is no longer in the case.
Mr. Iqbal, who has not settled, was a 33-year-old cable television installer on Long Island at the time of his arrest on Nov. 2, 2001. He lived in Hicksville with his wife, a United States citizen, and had an application pending for a green card. He was charged with document fraud for using a Social Security card that belonged to someone else.
Mr. Iqbal pleaded guilty after several months of confinement in the special unit, where he was subjected to daily body-cavity searches, sometimes several times a day, as well as to beatings and to extremes of hot and cold. He was kept in solitary confinement with the lights in his cell constantly on. He lost 40 pounds during six months in the special unit, before he was placed in the general prison population.
Mr. Iqbal’s lawsuit maintains that he was treated as a “high interest” prisoner solely because of his religion and national origin, under policies and procedures directed by Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Mueller and carried out by the other defendants. The suit also maintains that the conditions of confinement in the special unit violated minimal constitutional standards, of which the defendants should have been aware.
Although Mr. Iqbal is now the sole plaintiff in his case, the Supreme Court’s decision will affect another lawsuit that raises similar claims on behalf of seven named plaintiffs and a class of hundreds of others. That case, Turkmen v. Ashcroft, was argued before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in February.
In refusing the defendants’ request to dismiss the Iqbal case, the Second Circuit found that the accusations, although not yet proven, were at least “plausible.” That was sufficient to permit Mr. Iqbal’s lawyers to proceed to pretrial discovery to establish the facts, Judge Jon O. Newman wrote for the appeals court.
The government’s appeal maintains that the case against the two high officials should have been dismissed because it was based on nothing but “bare and conclusory allegations” and lacked evidence that the two condoned or even knew about the treatment Mr. Iqbal alleges to have occurred.
The standard for allowing the case to go forward should be higher than mere plausibility, the government said, pointing to recent Supreme Court decisions, including one in an antitrust case last year, that raised the standard for the evidence that plaintiffs must provide at the initial stage in order to withstand a motion to dismiss their lawsuit.
The government’s brief said the “vital importance” of the case, Ashcroft v. Iqbal, No. 07-1015, was “amplified in the context of high-ranking officials charged with responding to an extraordinary national-security crisis like the September 11 attacks.”
In his opinion for the appeals court last June, Judge Newman discounted the relevance of the Sept. 11 context for the rights that Mr. Iqbal was asserting. “The strength of our system of constitutional rights derives from the steadfast protection of those rights in normal and unusual times,” he wrote.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the Supreme Court majority last week in the decision on the rights of the Guantánamo detainees, expressed a similar sentiment when he said that “the laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.”One plaintiff has already settled for $300,000 for having his rights violated. The goverment is worried about these cases going to trial. Kennedy's majority opinion has some language that is not good for Aschroft or Mueller.