WASHINGTON – An Atlanta family whose home was wrongly raided by the FBI will get a new day in court, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
The opinion follows a 2017 early morning operation where an armed FBI SWAT team mistakenly entered the wrong house, breaking down the front door, deploying a flashbang grenade, and alarming a couple along with a 7-year-old child before they realized the error.
The FBI team swiftly apologized and headed to the correct location, with the team leader later admitting that his personal GPS had misled them to the wrong address.
Trina Martin and Toi Cliatt, the couple involved, filed a lawsuit against the federal government, accusing the agents of assault and battery, false arrest, and other violations. However, lower courts dismissed their case, with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluding that they couldn’t sue for what was essentially a genuine mistake. Additionally, the appeals court stated that the lawsuit was prohibited under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which establishes that federal laws override state laws.
The family’s lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that Congress clearly allowed for lawsuits like theirs after a pair of similar headline-making raids on wrong houses in 1974. The 11th Circuit was also ruling differently than other courts around the country, they said.
Public interest groups from across the political spectrum urged the justices to overturn the ruling, saying its reasoning would severely narrow the legal path for people to sue the federal government in law-enforcement accountability cases.
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