WASHINGTON (Middle East Eye) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday ruled in favor of the FBI in a case where three Muslim men from the state of California accused the agency of conducting illegal spying on them and their community after the 9/11 attacks.
The court unanimously overturned a lower court ruling in favor of the men, determining that a federal appeals court misapplied a federal law - the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) - governing how surveillance-related evidence can be used in court.
The surveillance operation was carried out by FBI informant Craig Monteilh, but it failed to produce any public evidence of wrongdoing. The arrangement unraveled when Monteilh threatened to take violent action. Community members reported him to the local police and obtained a restraining order against him, according to court papers.
The plaintiffs are Eritrean-born U.S. citizen Yassir Fazaga, an imam at the Orange County Islamic Foundation in Mission Viejo; native-born U.S. citizen Ali Uddin Malik, who attended the Islamic Center of Irvine; and Yasser Abdel Rahim, a U.S. permanent resident from Egypt who also attended the Islamic Center of Irvine. They are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and others.
At the heart of the case was whether the FBI could invoke “state secrets” privilege to avoid lawsuits for monitoring Muslim communities. The plaintiffs had sued the FBI and its agents responsible for directing Monteilh, claiming that their right to practice their religion had been violated.
However, the nation’s highest judicial body did not address the religious freedom issues that were raised in the original lawsuit, and it also refrained from ruling broadly on whether the government can invoke the state secrets privilege to throw out court cases.
“Today’s decision addresses only the narrow question whether 1806(f) (of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) displaces the state secrets privilege,” wrote Justice Samuel Alito in the majority opinion.
The case will now return back to the 9th Circuit Appeals Court for litigation and a chance for the plaintiffs to further argue their case.
“We are disappointed that today’s decision limits the reach of FISA and makes it easier for the FBI to avoid accountability for unconstitutional surveillance by asserting that the case involves state secrets,” Peter Bibring, senior counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said in a press conference following the ruling.
“But importantly, the Court refused to adopt the sweeping interpretation of the state secrets privilege that the government advanced here and that some lower courts have followed - that the state secret privilege allows courts to throw cases like this one out entirely simply because some evidence may be secret.”