SCOTUS revives tort claims over FBI search of wrong house

Exceptions and limitations to the government’s waiver of sovereign immunity under the Federal Tort Claims Act do not necessarily bar negligence and intentional tort claims against the government for FBI agents’ 2017 execution of arrest and search warrants at the wrong home in Atlanta, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in reversing a decision from the 11th Circuit.

In reaching its decision, the court held that the “law enforcement” proviso in 28 U.S.C. §2680(h) overrides only the intentional-tort exception in that subsection, not the discretionary-function exception or other exceptions throughout §2680.

Click here to read the full text of the June 12 decision in Martin v. United States.

• “The plaintiffs’ intentional-tort claims survive their encounter with subsection (h) thanks to the law enforcement proviso, as the Eleventh Circuit recognized. But it remains for that court on remand to consider whether subsection (a)’s discretionary-function exception bars either the plaintiffs’ negligent- or intentional-tort claims. As we have explained, the Eleventh Circuit must undertake that assessment without reference to its mistaken view that the law enforcement proviso applies to subsection (a). Should some or all of the plaintiffs’ claims survive the discretionary-function exception, the Eleventh Circuit must then ask whether, under Georgia state law, a ‘private individual under like circumstances’ would be liable for the acts and omissions the plaintiffs allege, subject to the defenses discussed in §2674 — not a Supremacy Clause defense nowhere mentioned there.”
  — Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, opinion of the court
• “I join in full the Court’s opinion, which holds that the Eleventh Circuit’s distinctive approach to suits under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) is wrong in two respects. The law enforcement proviso modifies only the subsection in which it is located: Section 2680(h)’s intentional-tort exception. The United States, moreover, may not defeat an FTCA suit simply by ‘showing that a federal officer’s acts had ‘some nexus with furthering federal policy’ and ‘compli[ed] with the full range of federal law.’ With those two principles clarified, I also agree that the Eleventh Circuit must now consider on remand whether the FTCA’s discretionary-function exception bars plaintiffs’ negligent- and intentional-tort claims. I write separately to underscore that there is reason to think the discretionary-function exception may not apply to these claims”
  — Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, concurring