Federal Judiciary

Narrow reading of Boumediene

By Akin Gump Supreme Court Practice Group

The federal judge overseeing some 200 Guantanamo Bay detainee cases ruled on Monday that the courts have no authority to hear challenges to the conditions of confinement at the Naval prison on the island of Cuba, or to interfere in any way with transfers of prisoners elsewhere.  The judge did so in a brief ruling giving a narrow interpretation of the Supreme Court’s ruling June 12 in Boumediene v. Bush (06-1195). The ruling can be found here.

Senior U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan found that Congress in 2006 had taken away all authority of federal courts to examine “transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of confinement” of any captive found by the government to be an “enemy combatant.”  The Supreme Court did not nullify that provision in Boumediene, Hogan wrote, so the courts “have no jurisdiction” over a detainee’s plea for access to his medical records and for a blanket and mattress in his cell at Guantanamo.

If Judge Hogan’s ruling withstands an appeal (the same issue of Boumediene’s scope is now pending in the D.C. Circuit Court), it would wipe out many of the claims that detainees have made since that ruling at the Court’s last Term — challenges to transfers, to transfers without first notifying detainees’ lawyers, to a lack of access to medical care and to their lawyers, to torture or abuse or to other living conditions in the various camps at Guantanamo.

What Boumediene did, according to Judge Hogan, was only to give detainees a constitutional right to challenge their detention, as such, in federal habeas petitions.  Although the Court had said at one point in its opinion that it was nullifying the entire provision that Congress had adopted in the Military Commissions Act of 2006 to curb detainees’ challenges, it actually strike down only the limit on filing a habeas claim, without more, the judge concluded.

“Cognizant of the long-standing rule of severability,” the judge wrote, “this Court holds that section 7(a)(2) remains valid and strips it of jurisdiction to hear a detainee’s claims that  ’relat[e]’ to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of confinement.”  Citing a 1987 Supreme Court ruling in another case, Hogan noted that the Court had said that courts must refrain from striking down more of a law than is necessary.

The ruling came in the case of Latif v. Gates (District Court docket 04-1254), involving Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif.  His lawyers sought immediate access to medical records, and an order requiring Guantanamo officials to provide him with a blanket and mattress in his cell.

Judge Hogan’s decision is not necessarily binding on other judges in District Court, especially since the judges had assigned him the task of coordinating the procedures for some 200 cases, and that may not include the authority to decide on the other judges’ behalf basic issues such as the scope of jurisdiction.  Moreover, two of the District judges have refused to send their cases to Hogan for coordination, so they would not be bound by his decision Monday, unless they chose to abide by it.

Full post as published by SCOTUSBLOG on September 22, 2008 (boomark / email).