The Supreme Court on Monday ruled against six foreigners who hoped to sue officials from President George W. Bush’s administration over alleged abuse in a Brooklyn jail after the 9/11 attacks.
The court ruled that several top Bush officials — including Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating President Trump’s campaign — cannot be held liable for the harsh treatment of undocumented immigrants that followed New York City’s darkest day.
The ruling essentially argued that the nationwide wave of fear after 9/11 substantiated severe treatment from law enforcement. Threats of lawsuits, the court said, could prevent officials from taking necessary national security measures in a time of crisis.
“The risk of personal damages liability is more likely to cause an official to second-guess difficult but necessary decisions concerning national-security policy,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the decision.
He said the alleged treatment at the jail was “tragic,” but the Supreme Court was not ruling on whether it was “proper.”
Rather, the case centered on whether federal officials could be sued over the abuse. The justices decided that Congress, not the courts, should have authority on that decision.
Civil rights group worried that the ruling would essentially make it impossible to hold federal officials accountable for civil rights violations.
“This decision regrettably provides constitutional immunity for some of the most high-level officials responsible for gross abuses in the aftermath of September 11,” ACLU National Security Project director Hina Shamsi said in a statement.
The Center for Constitutional Rights said the decision sends “a dangerous message in this time of rampant state-sponsored discrimination against Muslim and immigrant communities.”
The ruling, however, still allows a case to be pursued against one of the jail wardens.
The case began 15 years ago after dozens of undocumented immigrants were detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center in the aftermath of 9/11.
The plaintiffs said they were locked up because they appeared to be fit the profile of the terrorists. All of them were eventually released and deported.
They hoped to launch legal action against several Bush officials — including Mueller, who was FBI director at the time, and Josh Ashcroft, the former U.S. Attorney General. They argued that federal officials should be liable for putting policies in place that allowed such treatment.
Mueller and Ashcroft could have been personally liable in lawsuits had the court ruled against them.
Instead, a 4-2 majority protected them.
Only six justices heard the case, tipping the decision toward the court’s conservative majority. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan recused themselves because they were involved in the case before they joined the Supreme Court. Justice Neil Gorsuch, who joined the bench in April, sat it out.
Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented, arguing that this was a decision that will one day be remembered with shame.
“History tells us of far too many instances where the executive or legislative branch took action during time of war that on later examination, turned out unnecessarily and unreasonably to have deprived American citizens of basic constitutional rights,” Breyer wrote in his dissent.
