The Supreme Court said Monday it will decide whether former Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller must face a lawsuit that claims prisoners detained after Sept. 11 were abused because of their religion and ethnicity.
The court will hear Ashcroft's claim that he and Mueller are immune from lawsuits for their official actions.
BACK STORY
A federal judge in Brooklyn and the U.S. Appeals Court in Manhattan had cleared the way for a Pakistani Muslim man to continue his suit against those who were running the Justice Department in 2001.
Javaid Iqbal was arrested at his Long Island, N.Y., home on Nov. 2, 2001. He says he was kept in solitary confinement, beaten and abused over the next six months. No charges were filed against him, and he was released and deported to Pakistan.
He then sued Ashcroft, Mueller and 32 other former and current government employees, claiming they violated his constitutional rights by subjecting him to abuse and by discriminating against him because of his religion and nationality.
The government held most of the immigrants on the grounds that they had violated the immigration laws by, for example, staying longer than their visas permitted. Iqbal initially was held on a charge of credit-card fraud, but he was cleared of any link to terrorism.
RATIONALE FOR SUIT
Under long-standing laws, persons in the United States can sue officials who knowingly violate their rights under the Constitution. The judge and the U.S. Court of Appeals refused to dismiss the suit. Those judges ruled that if his complaint were true, it would state a violation of the Constitution and that Iqbal and his lawyers should be permitted to question Ashcroft and Mueller under oath.
GOVERNMENT RESPONSE
Bush administration lawyers appealed to the high court and argued that Cabinet-level officials should not have to answer for the allegedly discriminatory acts of subordinates, absent a glimmer of evidence that they intended or condoned the harsh treatment.
WHAT'S NEXT
The case, to be argued around the end of the year, will help determine when Cabinet officers and other high-ranking officials can be sued when lower-level government workers violate people's civil rights.
NEWS SERVICES