Amicus Briefs
Martin v. U.S.
CASE SUMMARY
In October 2017, Curtrina Martin and her family were suddenly awakened before dawn to the deafening sound of flash grenades and what they believed were intruders invading their home, as FBI SWAT agents rammed in their front door. Ms. Martin’s partner was shackled on the floor and aggressively interrogated, while Ms. Martin was held at gunpoint as she desperately sought assurance of her seven-year-old son’s safety, which an officer refused to provide. One problem: the SWAT team had knocked down the wrong house’s door because the FBI agent in charge of the operation failed to check the clearly-marked house address before authorizing the raid.
Seeking relief for their trauma and the damage done to their home, the family filed Federal Tort Claims Act claims against the government for assault, battery, and false imprisonment, as well as a Fourth Amendment claim against the individual FBI agents involved in the raid. Rather than permitting the family’s claims to proceed, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld the district court’s dismissal of the case. The Eleventh Circuit concluded that the FBI agents’ actions violated no “clearly established” law. It ruled that the harm that the family had suffered was the result of an FBI agent’s “discretionary act” (i.e., the act of failing to verify the house address), thus warranting total immunity for the government and a total absence of relief for the family. NCLA urges the Supreme Court to reverse this fatally flawed ruling, which grossly expands the FTCA’s “discretionary-function” exception to shield the government from accountability for virtually all federal law enforcement conduct (or misconduct). The ruling misinterprets the Constitution, distorting the Supremacy Clause to use it as a means of nullifying claims under the FTCA—a federal statute—and leaves victims of federal law enforcement abuse victims with no recourse, effectively stripping them of any meaningful remedy in direct contravention of Congress.