Supreme Court will review FBI’s immunity in lawsuit over mistaken house raid

The Supreme Court said Monday it will review whether the FBI should have immunity in a lawsuit brought by a family whose Atlanta home was mistakenly raided by a SWAT team.

In 2017, agents executed a search warrant at the wrong address, believing it was the home of an alleged violent gang member. The warrant had instead listed an address three houses away.

Armed and dressed in full tactical gear, the agents breached the family’s home before sunrise and deployed a flash-bang at the entrance. Hilliard Cliatt was handcuffed, his partner, Curtrina Martin, was held at gunpoint, and Martin’s 7-year-old son was also home, court documents show.

Agents realized they had the wrong address within about five minutes. They immediately left and proceeded to arrest the alleged gang member down the street. FBI Special Agent Lawrence Guerra, who led the team, returned later in the day to apologize. He also promised to pay for damages and left a business card.

The family sued the FBI under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), which allows private citizens to sue for damages when federal employees commit wrongful acts. The Supreme Court in a brief order Monday agreed to take up the family’s appeal after lower judges found the FBI had immunity from the lawsuit.

The high court normally only takes up cases for the current term through mid-January. But the justices set a slightly faster-than-usual briefing schedule that enables the latest case to still be heard this term, which would culminate in a decision by early summer.

It follows a batch of cases on Friday the high court similarly squeezed in for this term, including a push to create the first public religious charter school. The late, new cases come as several disputes already on the court's docket could be shelved, as President Trump’s Justice Department considers policy shifts that would render them moot.

The Supreme Court’s order agrees to review a ruling from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that many of the Atlanta family’s claims fell under an exception to the FTCA, and the remaining claims were barred under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.

"It's undisputed that Agent Guerra and his team committed an avoidable and dangerous mistake by raiding the wrong house. So there are no messy fact disputes. And the Eleventh Circuit's holdings on the questions presented leave Petitioners — and the many similarly situated plaintiffs who will come after them — entirely remediless,” the family’s attorneys argued.

The Justice Department urged the high court to stay out of the case, insisting the lower decision was correct and posed no split with other federal appeals courts.

The family is represented by the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit libertarian law firm that frequently brings cases to the high court.

Its petition was backed by a bipartisan group of seven members of Congress, who filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the justices to hear the case: Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) and Reps. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.), Nikema Williams (D-Ga.), Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Dan Bishop (R-N.C.).

“Today, victims of wrong-home raids by federal officers in Collinsville, Illinois, may sue under the FTCA, but victims of an identical raid in Collinsville, Georgia, could not,” their attorneys wrote.

“That asymmetry is untenable and contravenes Congress’s deliberate decision 50 years ago to accept responsibility and provide redress to those harmed by federal law-enforcement officers’ misdeeds. This Court should grant review to restore uniformity in this important area of federal law and ensure that Congress’s policy judgment is given effect,” they continued.

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