Federal Judge Tosses Suit by Lawyers Who Feared Illegal Surveillance
A federal judge has tossed a lawsuit challenging the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretap program because the plaintiffs—a liberal legal group and five of its lawyers—don’t have standing.
U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker of San Francisco ruled that fear of being wiretapped, without actual proof, is not an injury in fact that supports standing, Courthouse News Service reports.
The suit by the Center for Constitutional Rights was based on comments about warrantless wiretaps by then-President George W. Bush. He said the government was monitoring communications between the United States and foreign countries when one of the parties was believed to have terrorist ties.
The suit claimed the government may have monitored conversations between CCR lawyers and Muslim clients detained after the terrorist attacks, and as a result their future speech was chilled. The government has since discontinued the program.
The Justice Department had said in an early court filing in the case that it could not confirm or deny whether any lawyers were wiretapped.
Walker said the plaintiffs had no standing, and even if they did, there was no First Amendment violation.
“Plaintiffs have not provided any precedent for the notion that the First Amendment protects against a ‘risk … that the government may have access to aspects of [a plaintiff’s] litigation strategy’ where there is no proof that any surveillance in fact occurred,” Walker wrote in the opinion (PDF). “Nor have plaintiffs provided precedent for a protected First Amendment right ‘to litigate … cases in the most effective manner.’ ”
The Center for Constitutional Rights website has more information on the lawsuit.
In a press release, CCR senior attorney Shayana Kadidal said the Obama administration had fought to keep the case out of court “on the Catch-22 argument that no one can ever prove they were targeted by a secret program.” Kadidal expressed disappointment that “the court refused to even order the minimum relief we sought—an order that the government destroy any records of this illegal surveillance that it still retains.”
Updated at 1:35 p.m. to include comments from Kadidal.
