[ad_1]
The U.S. Supreme Court has heard debates a case Three Muslims in California have been accused of illegal surveillance by the FBI following the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The country’s top court has been asked to decide whether to allow the men’s case to proceed with opposition from the FBI, which has said it cannot be prosecuted for religious discrimination because doing so could reveal state secrets.
The question is whether a 1978 U.S. surveillance law that lays down rules for domestic espionage for Americans displaces judges ’doctrine of state secrecy and provides reasons to hear the men’s case.
Muslims across the U.S. have accused the FBI of systematically violating their constitutional rights for spying since Sept. 11, but there have been few opportunities in the courts to challenge the FBI’s conduct, mostly because it was done in secret.
Conservative Supreme Court Judge Neil Gorsuch on Monday challenged the U.S. government’s argument that the FBI should be allowed to dismiss the case by keeping the evidence secret.
“In a world where the state of national security is growing every day, that’s pretty much the power,” Gorsuch said.
The lawsuit is based on a 14-month period in 2006 and 2007 that the FBI paid an informant named Craig Monteilh to gather information about Muslims as part of a post-September 11 anti-terrorism investigation.
Monteilh met with Muslims in southern California, took a Muslim name and said he wanted to convert to Islam, according to court documents, while recording interviews and surveillance.
Sheikh Yassir Fazaga, imams of the Orange County Islamic Foundation in Mission Viejo, and Ali Uddin Malik and Yasser Abdelrahim, members of the congregation at the Irvine Islamic Center in Irvine, California, filed the lawsuit.
The men, represented by attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union and others, claimed religious discrimination and other rights violations, saying they were spied on solely because of their faith.
A U.S. district court rejected the case after the U.S. government said it could reveal “secret states” that could go ahead, acknowledging that continuing the case would pose a “high risk of disclosing secret information.”
But the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court in San Francisco overturned the decision in 2019, saying the first court should privately examine the evidence the government said was state secret.
The Biden administration, as before the Trump administration, has argued that the decision was wrong.
On Monday, other Supreme Court judges also questioned whether the FBI case could not be accepted on the grounds that state secrets would be endangered.
Judge Stephen Breyer said it would be premature to dismiss the claims without the trial judge being able to properly review certain documents related to the case. “My point is that there should be a way to analyze the information and decide what to do,” said liberal jurist Breyer.
Ahilan Arunlanathan, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who argued the case on behalf of the plaintiffs, said the FBI cannot use secret information to dismiss the lawsuit.
Instead, Arunlanathan told judges he had to allow the case to go ahead, even if the FBI information was hidden from the court. “Neither Congress nor ordinary law allows for the dismissal and revocation of evidence,” he said at the same time.
But Judge Brett Kavanaugh looked favorably on the FBI’s secret claims. “This kind of information, depending on what it is, is not the kind of information you want, even in the White House,” Conservative Kavanaugh said.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule by the end of June [File: Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo]However, Gorsuch and other judges left court defenders who questioned the government’s arguments “optimistic” about the direction of the court, said ACLU lawyer Patrick Toomey, who represents the three Muslims.
“They clearly understood the key issues in the lawsuit, including what is at stake in dismissing claims of religious discrimination that the government may claim to be secret,” Toomey told Al Jazeera.
“Justice has shown that they are looking for a way to agree on how the case should go from here on out,” Toomey said.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule by the end of June.
“We sincerely hope that the Supreme Court will allow our clients’ case to faithfully pursue the protection of religious freedom in the Constitution, ”Arunlanathan said at a post-hearing press conference on Monday.
“They had a lot of tough questions for both sides. We will now wait and hope that they will see a path to justice, ”he said.
[ad_2]
Source link
