Personal Injury Law

US Supreme Court asked to dismiss officials from 9/11 lawsuit

By Edward Bills

A Bush administration lawyer urged justices today to throw out a lawsuit in which former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, at left, and former FBI director Robert Mueller are accused of ordering the jailing of hundreds of Muslim men after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

An administration lawyer says plaintiffs haven’t shown that ex-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and FBI chief Robert Mueller were involved in discrimination.

The lawysers for the Muslim detainees’ who brought the suit see a Catch-22.

U.S. Solicitor General Gregory G. Garre said the suit against Ashcroft and Mueller should be thrown out because the Muslim men could not show the “personal involvement of those high-ranking officials in the alleged discriminatory acts.” Because they lacked this proof in their original complaint, the suit should be dismissed at the pleading stage, Garre said.

Lawyers for the Muslim men called this a classic Catch-22 because such Plaintiffs will never be able to provide the level of detail Ashcroft and Mueller would demand at the beginning of a lawsuit, because that information is in the exclusive control of the government.

A federal judge in Brooklyn as well as the U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan allowed his suit to proceed.

But most of the justices who spoke during Wednesday’s argument said Ashcroft and Mueller should be dismissed from the suits. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, they said, it was expected that top officials at the Justice Department would seek to arrest and question those who might know something about the hijackers or other terrorist plots.

Only Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David H. Souter spoke up for allowing the lawsuit to proceed. They said the federal rules for civil lawsuits allow claims from plaintiffs who say their rights were violated.

Later this week, the court will meet to decide whether to hear an appeal from four former prisoners who say they were abused and tortured at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Their suit against top Defense officials was thrown out by an appeals court, which said the prisoners did not have constitutional rights.

Full post as published by Bodily Injury Blog on December 11, 2008 (boomark / email).