Even the SCOTUS Gets One Right Every Now And Again – Sort Of
BY Herschel Smith
12 hours, 25 minutes ago
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Thursday that an Atlanta family whose home was mistakenly raided by the FBI in 2017 can move forward with their lawsuit.
The decision stems from a pre-dawn incident in which an FBI SWAT team broke down the family’s front door, deployed a flashbang grenade, and pointed weapons at Trina Martin, her then-boyfriend Toi Cliatt, and her 7-year-old son, only to realize moments later they had entered the wrong house.
So far, so good.
But the government argued in the Atlanta case that judges shouldn’t second-guess agents doing their jobs. A District Court and the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the case by finding the agents were immune.
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Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson agreed with the decision. They noted that courts have struggled to determine what level of “judgment or choice” in a police action should protect officers from lawsuits, but said officials shouldn’t be shielded from “careless” or “unconstitutional” conduct.
“We readily acknowledge that different lower courts have taken different views of the discretionary-function exception,” Sotomayor wrote, but those questions range beyond what the justices were considering in the Atlanta case.
It sounds to me like they’re vacillating and confused. Just make all SWAT raids illegal and this will stop.
Oh, and if they already knew that the lower courts had different interpretations of all of this, why did they allow it to continue?
Pssstt …
On June 15, 2025 at 9:58 pm, X said:
The only reason the Court gives a shit is because the victims are black. When the cops kick in the doors of white people, nobody gives a flying leap.
Sorry, peckerwoods! Qualified immunity!