CAC Release: In a Narrow, Unanimous Decision, Supreme Court Gives Victims of Wrong-House Raid Another Chance to Hold the Government Accountable
WASHINGTON, DC – Following today’s decision at the Supreme Court in Martin v. United States, a case in which the Court considered whether the Supremacy Clause overrides the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA)’s express waiver of sovereign immunity when a federal employee’s actions “have some nexus with furthering federal policy” and “can reasonably be characterized as complying with the full range of federal law,” Constitutional Accountability Center Douglas T. Kendall Fellow Nargis Aslami issued the following reaction:
In a unanimous decision penned by Justice Gorsuch, the Supreme Court today properly rejected the Eleventh Circuit’s “outlier position” that the Supremacy Clause supplies the government with a defense to liability under the FTCA in the circumstances of this case.
The Court’s decision aligns with arguments we advanced in our amicus brief—namely, that the Supremacy Clause provides courts with a “rule of decision” to be applied in a principled manner only when there is a conflict between state and federal law. There is no such conflict here because, in the Court’s words, “Congress has entered the field and expressly bound the federal government to accept liability under state tort law on the same terms as a ‘private individual.’”
As a result of this decision, the plaintiffs’ intentional tort claims are not defeated by the Supremacy Clause, and the plaintiffs will have another opportunity to present them when their case goes back to the lower courts.
CAC Senior Appellate Counsel Miriam Becker-Cohen added the following reaction:
The other key aspect of this case was whether the FTCA’s law-enforcement proviso that Congress passed in response to a series of abusive and illegal wrong-house raids conducted by federal law enforcement officers overcomes an exception to FTCA liability for “discretionary functions.” The Supreme Court held that it does not—it overcomes a different FTCA exception for intentional torts, but not that one.
In light of this aspect of the Court’s holding, plaintiffs will have to go back to the lower courts to pursue their claim, and those courts will have to consider in the first instance whether those claims are barred by the discretionary-function exception. As Justice Sotomayor explained in her concurring opinion, there is good reason to believe those claims should not be barred, in keeping with Congress’s plan to make federal officers liable for wrong-house raids.