WASHINGTON — An Atlanta family whose home was wrongly raided by the FBI will get a new day in court, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Thursday.
The opinion comes after a predawn 2017 raid in which an armed FBI SWAT team smashed in a front door and set off a flashbang grenade, pointing guns at a couple and terrifying a 7-year-old boy before realizing they were in the wrong house.
The FBI team quickly apologized and left for the right place, with the team leader later saying that his personal GPS device had led him to the wrong address.
The couple, Trina Martin and Toi Cliatt, filed a lawsuit against the federal government accusing the agents of assault and battery, false arrest and other violations. But lower courts tossed out the case. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found they couldn’t sue over what amounted to an honest mistake. The appeals court also found the lawsuit was barred under a provision of the Constitution known as the Supremacy Clause, which says federal laws take precedence over 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.
