November 04, 2004 | No-Fly Lawsuit

The ACLU's class action challenge to the no-fly list had its first day in court today in U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington at Seattle, as its lawyers fought against a government motion to dismiss the case. The government argues the case has no merit and it is filed in the wrong court.

From their press release:

The ACLU lawsuit, which was filed on April 6, asks the court to declare that the No-Fly lists violate airline passengers' constitutional rights to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure and to due process of law under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. The ACLU is also asking the TSA to develop satisfactory procedures that will allow innocent people to fly without being treated as potential terrorists and subjected to humiliation and delays.

The individuals named in the class-action lawsuit are:
* John Shaw, 75, a retired Presbyterian minister, from Sammamish, Washington;
* Michelle D. Green, 36, a Master Sergeant in the U.S. Air Force;
* David Nelson, 35, an attorney from Belleville, Illinois;
* David C. Fathi, 41, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU National Prison Project in Washington, D.C.;
* Mohamed Ibrahim, 51, a coordinator for an immigrants' rights project with the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia;
* Alexandra Hay, 22, a student at Middlebury College in Vermont; and
* Sarosh Syed, 27, a graduate student at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.

The government is arguing that the District court has no jurisdiction and that if the lawsuit has any merits, it should be filed in the appeals court first. They successfully used this argument to have the Northern California District Court dismiss John Gilmore's challenge to the identification requirement.

I was not able to get to the hearing today, so it is hard to say how receptive the judge was to this argument.

The TSA is also arguing that the no-fly list, the selectee list and the procedures that airlines must follow to enforce the lists are SSI (sensitive security information). This classification means that the government will refuse to disclose (.pdf) this information in open court.

The ACLU's page on the lists is here.

Posted by Ryan Singel at November 4, 2004 09:54 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.secondaryscreening.net/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/38