Martin v. USA: A wrong-house raid ends up at the door of the Supreme Court

WASHINGTON (Gray DC) - It’s a classic David v. Goliath here at the Supreme Court.

Law enforcement raided the house of an innocent family, and they want the government to pay up.

The government says they shouldn’t have to.

“They busted down the front door. They detonated a flashbang grenade in the living room and they came in with guns drawn,” explains Dylan Moore, an attorney representing the victims from the Institute for Justice.

Moore says a law is already in place - called the Federal Claims Torts Act, or FTCA, to protect families like this one.

“Congress amended the FTCA to make sure that people who were subject to wrong house raids and other instances is of police misconduct would have a cause of action against the United States to recover for damages.”

But the lower courts ruled that in this case, there’s an exception.

“The 11th Circuit said the government doesn’t have to pay anything because they are protected by something called sovereign immunity,” explains Athul Acharya with the group Public ability.

The idea is that because the raid happened during normal law enforcement functions, the officers, and the government are shielded from ability.

“The stakes are high in the sense that what the court did here was really an act of judicial policymaking.,” says Miriam Becker-Cohen with the Constitutional ability Center. “Courts are not supposed to be rewriting statutes and coming up with new exceptions to statutes that were specifically designed to create remedies”

Oral arguments are set for Tuesday, with a decision expected by June

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