Supreme Court Fast-Tracks Case of FBI Botched Raid That Traumatized a Georgia Family

A family seeking justice from a botched FBI raid will have their day in court. It’s not their first time, but it’s the biggest time: The Supreme Court has agreed to take up the case.

Curtrina Martin and her family were resting peacefully in their home when the FBI rushed in, threw a flash grenade, and arrested her then-fiancee Hilliard Toi Cliatt. The whole episode traumatized Martin, Cliatt, and Martin’s seven-year-old son.

The FBI had the wrong house. In fact, they weren’t even on the right street. The house they were looking for was 3741 Landau Lane, while Martin’s home address was 3756 Denville Trace. According to Google Maps, the addresses were over 450 feet apart. The FBI says they used a GPS device that allegedly misled them.

The agent in charge, Lawrence Guerra, realized after traumatizing Martin’s family that Martin did not match the physical 

Guerra apologized and promised that the FBI would address the property damage, but the family wanted (and needed more). They sued the FBI and proceeded to lose twice because of some rather shoddy legal reasoning.

Martin v. United States – District Court

The district court originally allowed some of the claims against the FBI to move forward, but the most significant decision the district court initially made was to block some of the negligence-based claims under the discretionary-function exception of the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA).

This exception under the FTCA shields government officials from liability for actions involving discretion, even if those actions were negligent. In other words, based on the law and subsequently found in the court’s ruling, the government can be negligent only if it very clearly violated a rule or policy.

The 11th Circuit’s Ruling

When the appeal went before the 11th Circuit, the court had two key findings.

1. The FBI’s actions were “discretionary” due to a lack of stringent policies on preparing for warrant execution.
2. The Supremacy Clause barred claims because the actions were connected to federal policy.

Both of these findings seem extremely problematic. For the first, the court basically said that because the FBI didn’t have strict policies about not throwing flash grenades into the wrong home during a raid, they could not be found to be negligent. After all, the court said, it was dark outside and anyone could confused two completely different addresses.

And for the second finding, the 11th Circuit appears to be the only federal appeals court to apply the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution this way – which is understandable, given how bonkers it seems. The court basically said “If the federal government does it with the (extremely vague) intent of advancing federal policy, you actually can’t sue over it because their policy is most important.”

If the 11th Circuit says you can’t sue the federal government because its actions were meant to advance policy, then there seems to be no point in even having the FTCA at all, because isn’t that what the government claims to do every time it does anything?

Onward to SCOTUS

But the Supreme Court has decided to take up the case, and it looks like they want to take it up quickly and get the argument in for this term – which is a good thing.

SCOTUS decided on Monday to fast-track the case, it seems.

Just over six hours after the justices issued a list of orders from their Jan. 24 conference, and three days after they granted three cases from that conference, the court issued a new order granting review in Martin v. United States and fast-tracking the case for oral argument, presumably during the 2024-25 term.

The Justices will be looking at a couple of legal issues here:

• Supremacy Clause: The 11th Circuit is unique in its assertion that actions furthering federal policy are immune under the FTCA due to the Supremacy Clause. This interpretation effectively nullifies FTCA claims involving federal employees acting within their discretionary authority. No other circuits apply the Supremacy Clause this way, making the 11th Circuit an outlier.
• Discretionary-Function Exception: The FTCA exempts claims involving discretionary acts. However, there is disagreement among circuits about 1) Whether discretion must be grounded in policy considerations and 2) Whether the exception applies to unconstitutional or careless acts.

This is a significant case, given recent concerns about the weaponization of government and government agencies throughout the years. The 11th Circuit opened a very questionable can of worms by giving federal government agencies a path to claim that they were simply acting on federal policy in order to shield themselves against lawsuits.

But given what we have seen with government agencies acting (either independently or under orders from the executive branch) in ways that blur, if not completely cross, the line between responsible behavior and abuse, it should concern Americans that the legal system is attempting to find novel ways for the government to protect itself against it is supposed to be protecting.

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