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Supreme Court Blocks Sept. 11 Detainee Lawsuit
WASHINGTON - A deeply split Supreme Court on Monday blocked a Pakistani man from suing former Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI director Robert Mueller for allegedly abusive treatment he faced when rounded up with other Arab Muslims in New York after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The court, in a decision by Justice Anthony Kennedy, said the man failed to present sufficient information that would link Ashcroft and Mueller to mistreatment he faced or show that the detention policies arose from bias on account of race or religion, rather than a neutral investigation.
Kennedy was joined by the four more conservative members of the court; the four liberals dissented.
Javid Iqbal sued Ashcroft and Mueller, along with other officials, saying he was subjected to harsher conditions, including abusive strip searches and beatings, because he is an Arab Muslim.
Federal agents had arrested Iqbal, a Pakistani citizen working as a cable television installer on Long Island, at his home in late 2001 and held him for several months at the Metropolitan Detention Center.
He was among more than 1,000 people picked up and questioned by the FBI looking for suspects in the New York area with links to the attacks.
Iqbal, who was charged with fraud related to his identification papers, says he was designated a person of "high interest" solely because of his race and religion. He was transferred to a unit, where, he contends, on his first day guards "picked him up and threw him against the wall, kicked him in the stomach, punished him in the face, and dragged him across the room."
The Brooklyn center became the subject of complaints of detainee mistreatment, a 2003 Department of Justice inspector general report found widespread abuse of detainees there, and numerous individual lawsuits related to treatment at the center are still pending.
Iqbal, who was deported to Pakistan, sued current and former federal officials and 19 prison officers. Monday's case involved only the claim against high-ranking officials and their potential responsibility for the alleged violation of Iqbal's rights while in detention.
The key question revolved around information Iqbal had to produce about Ashcroft and Mueller's involvement in detention policies to have his case against them heard. Lower federal courts had ruled that Iqbal's claim could go forward.
In a reversal Monday, Kennedy said Iqbal failed to bring forth enough facts to state a claim of purposeful and unlawful discrimination on the part of the top officials.
To get his complaint heard, Kennedy said, Iqbal had to show that the officials adopted and implemented the detention policies not for neutral, investigative reasons but to purposefully discriminate based on race, religion or national origin.
Kennedy said the high court was not expressing any opinion about Iqbal's claims against prison officials.
His "account of his prison ordeal alleges serious official misconduct that we need not address here," Kennedy wrote. "Our decision is limited to the determination that (Iqbal's) complaint does not entitle him to relief" from Ashcroft and Mueller.
Kennedy was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
Justice Souter, writing for the dissenters, said the majority used too high of a standard when reviewing Iqbal's pleading and should not have blocked further hearings on his claims. Souter said the majority wrongly rejected the possibility that the top officials could have been liable as supervisors of the men at the detention center.
Souter noted that Ashcroft and Mueller in their legal filings "made the critical concession that a supervisor's knowledge of a subordinate's unconstitutional conduct and deliberate indifference to that conduct are grounds for ... liability."
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10 Comments so far
Show AllWell, this is the first 5-4 defeat for human rights and constitutional protection since the 5-4 decision in 2000 that put BushCo in charge and disenfranchised every American voter regardless of party.
Remember, one man appointed the President of the US, and one man will suffice to destroy generations of civil right and freedoms, one vote at a time.
Some editing has been made since first posting this.
"minitrue May 18th, 2009 3:55 pm
Well, this is the first 5-4 defeat for human rights and constitutional protection since the 5-4 decision in 2000 that put BushCo in charge and ..."
So there were 9 Supreme Court judges voting on whether to require a 2000 election vote re-count or to "simply" decide it was somehow constitutionally okay to just go ahead and appoint him, like in blindfolded manner, nearly? I recall that there were judges who were first part of the panel and who were demanding for a vote re-count, and they were replaced with yes-men; therefore, the panel, and if what you, minitrue, say is true about the final (as you imply it's the final vote) 5-4 vote, then four of those 9 judges were against appointing Bush without re-count. That would mean that the replacements for the prior dissenting judges weren't all yes-men, or that some dissenting judges, who perhaps didn't at first dissent, came to do so. Is this is not how the ruling process worked out, then what information is missing from this paragraph, or how did the process differ from what I just described?
I just tried to find an answer at Wikipedia and found the or a relevant page, but it doesn't give any answer to the above question. However, it does allow me to learn that Gore had officially challenged the vote count in three or four Florida counties and this eventually failed for two or three reasons, including that recounts weren't completed by the deadlines set by the Fla Supreme Court, and the federal SC having overridden a change, extension, to the deadline set by the Fla SC, f.e. Under 'Post recount'immediately following the information on Florida for the subsection of 'The Election' in the Wikipedia page, readers are told the following.
(url broken over two lines to fully fit here)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
United_States_presidential_election,_2000
Quote: "On January 6, 2001, a joint session of Congress met to certify the electoral vote. Twenty members of the House of Representatives, most of them Democratic members of the Congressional Black Caucus, rose one-by-one to file objections to the electoral votes of Florida. However, according to an 1877 law, any such objection had to be sponsored by both a representative and a senator. No senator would co-sponsor these objections, deferring to the Supreme Court's ruling. Therefore, Gore, who was presiding in his capacity as President of the Senate, ruled each of these objections out of order."
Based on this, it seems it's as much Gore's fault that a full re-count wasn't conducted as it was the fault of the Supreme Court(s) not allowing the virtue of [patience] to have a reasonable chance; needing the election, of the [U.S. President], to be quickly done, in a jiffy, snap, ...; like it's not a particularly serious matter, or nearly. While he is said to have officially challenged, at first, he had a second chance and stood against it, as I understand the above text.
(And John Kerry provides some analogy for this, but his concession, after promising to his voters that he'd challenge if a re-count seemed justified, was on the same day of the 2004 election or, else, the immediately next after. Two conceders in a row from the same party for the presidential election(s). It seems a little rotten to me; [seems], anyway.)
I'm definitely no expert in this topic area, but this is my interpretation for now; until finding some adequately authoritative explanation(s) anyway.
The Javid Iqbal decision will go down in the same dubious light as some of the other low lights from the US Supreme Court: Bush vs. Gore, Plessey vs. Ferguson, Santa Clara vs. Union Pacific, & upholding the WW2 internment of Japanese Americans, among others. One can only hope that next opening after David Souter is amongst the five who choose to condone discrimination.
Bush Crime Family Judges Vote That Way.
Did any of the Roman Catholic judges vote against torture?
The big question ---- Who will Obama Appoint?
"Humbaba May 18th, 2009 5:59 pm
...
Did any of the Roman Catholic judges vote against torture?"
Are there any of RC's among these judges? If there are, then I guess RC's have made some "progress" in the U.S., that is, in terms of the Protestants (of one denomination or another) having historically been (and possibly still are) predominant among people claiming to be Christian in the U.S.A. I believe to have read not long ago that it was very difficult for RC's to get into high offices of the U.S. government; having learned this is when I was reading or viewing a video about when JFK was running for the presidency.
RC's who rather aren't Christian are, f.e., John Kerry, due to associations to crime and Skull & Bones, and the military chaplains in Iraq in 2003, those who quite viciously (diabolically) denegrated U.S. troops who went to them due to having real [consciences], the chaplains having called these soldiers 'cowards', etcetera. Such RC's, regardless of what status they politically hold in society, are certainly not real Christians. They sure seem to be Roman-like, but definitely are not Christian.
Referring to such people as RC only has some value when criticising the Vatican for not outing them, I suppose. Otherwise, they're not Christian and there's no real point in referring to them as if they are. Referring to them as [false] Christians, however, now this is fitting.
The repugs and conservatives constantly put out the old refrain about how liberal judges "legislate from the bench" (make their own laws to fit the case), while TRUE judges (meaning of course the repug ones) follow the law (question is, WHO'S law?
So we've got five catholic judges (isn't Kennedy also catholic?) in the supreme court making their decisions based on the pope's dictates, and that makes their decisions right? Right!
Iqbal..... Once again I declare that I wish proper nouns were allowed in scrabble...
What a surprise!!! Does anyone still expect justice to have a chance over politics?
The Supreme Joke does it again! Can Obama speak truth to power and appoint a progressive justice?