{"id":576,"date":"2009-12-01T09:35:17","date_gmt":"2009-12-01T16:35:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.harvardnsj.com\/?p=576"},"modified":"2009-12-01T09:35:17","modified_gmt":"2009-12-01T16:35:17","slug":"ninth-circuit-to-review-state-secrets-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/2009\/12\/ninth-circuit-to-review-state-secrets-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Ninth Circuit to Rehear State Secrets Case"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jonathan Abrams, NSJ Staff Editor, HLS 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n

On October 27th, the Ninth Circuit granted en banc<\/em> review to an important case involving the \u201cstate secrets\u201d privilege.<\/p>\n

The case, Mohamed v. Jeppesen Dataplan Inc.<\/em>, 579 F.3d 943 (9th Cir. 2009), involves a lawsuit brought by five foreign nationals who claim they were part of the CIA\u2019s \u201cextraordinary rendition program.\u201d\u00a0 The plaintiffs accuse Jeppesen of providing flight planning and logistical support to the program, which allegedly involved their transportation to secret prisons where they were tortured.\u00a0 Before Jeppesen could answer the complaint, the United States government intervened, asserted the state secrets privilege, and on that basis, moved for dismissal.\u00a0 The government argued that allowing the lawsuit to go forward would result in the disclosure of information that could be expected to cause grave damage to the national security of the United States.\u00a0 The district court granted the motion to dismiss, finding that the subject matter <\/em>of the suit involved state secrets, namely, allegations of covert operations in foreign countries.<\/p>\n

A unanimous panel of Ninth Circuit judges reversed<\/a>.\u00a0 The court rejected the government\u2019s assertion that when the \u201csubject matter\u201d of a lawsuit is a state secret, the entire lawsuit should be dismissed.\u00a0 The court found that this position had no logical limit, as it would effectively allow the government to \u201ccordon off all secret government actions from judicial scrutiny.\u201d\u00a0 This would force an unnecessary zero-sum decision between the Judiciary\u2019s duty to say what the law is, and the Executive\u2019s duty to preserve the national security.\u00a0 The court held that the government could ask judges to conduct a case-by-case review of whether the disclosure of documents would imperil national security, but they cannot shut down an entire lawsuit.<\/p>\n

In agreeing to hear the case en banc<\/a><\/em>, the Ninth Circuit has delayed or averted Supreme Court review.\u00a0 The argument date has not been announced.<\/p>\n

A New York Times article detailing the panel decision can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jonathan Abrams, NSJ Staff Editor, HLS 2012 On October 27th, the Ninth Circuit granted en banc review to an important case involving the \u201cstate secrets\u201d privilege. The case, Mohamed v. Jeppesen Dataplan Inc., 579 F.3d 943 (9th Cir. 2009), involves a lawsuit brought by five foreign nationals who claim they were part of the CIA\u2019s \u201cextraordinary rendition program.\u201d\u00a0 The plaintiffs accuse Jeppesen of providing flight planning and logistical support to the program, which allegedly involved their transportation to secret prisons where they were tortured.\u00a0 Before Jeppesen could answer the complaint, the United States government intervened, asserted the state secrets […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZtUX-9i","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}