Thread: So Fed Gov. can be sued

Update August 24, 2005:

IN LANDMARK DECISION AGAINST BUSH ADMINISTRATION, FEDERAL COURT RECOGNIZES HARM CAUSED BY GLOBAL WARMING

Lawsuit by Environmental Groups and Cities Goes Forward

A federal judge in California ruled yesterday against the federal government and allowed the groundbreaking climate change lawsuit to proceed. The landmark decision is the first time that a federal court has specifically granted legal standing for a lawsuit exclusively challenging the Federal government's failure to evaluate the impacts of its actions on the earth's climate and U.S. citizens.
View the judge's decision


Update March 22, 2005: The U.S. Government attempted to move the case from California to Washington, D.C. Despite the fact that all of the Plaintiffs are either based, or have offices in California, the trial court granted the Government's request.

In response, the Plaintiffs filed a mandamus petition with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals explaining the hardship, particularly to the Cities of Oakland, Arcata, and Santa Monica, of litigating in a distant court.

The Ninth Circuit ordered that the case shall remain in California.

The Government is now claiming that this case should be dismissed because: (1) the Plaintiffs lack standing, (2) OPIC and ExIm have not taken any action subjecting them to judicial review, and (3) that OPIC is exempt from complying with NEPA.

The Plaintiffs have opposed the Government's claims. A hearing on these issues will take place in the U.S. Court House in San Francisco on April 29th, 2005.

This is from April 2005. Do you have any more current information than a judge's decision rendered last year?

What is the status of the case? What is the status of Defendants' Motion for Dismissal?

And what's the link for what you posted?

I'm hesitant always to post links.... but since you asked here is it:

http://www.climatelawsuit.org/

The question has come up before whether or not we can sue the Federal government and the President of the United States for failure to uphold their oath of office and their failures to defend the constitution of the United States. Additionally, for putting Americans for which they are sworn to protect, at risk from invasion by a foreign government as a result of their negligence.

Many asked if it were possible to sue them. And my answer is yes.

There are actually many more lawsuits on record that are being blocked out of the news media.

The only reason Xanadu and I are researching this is that we believe as a last resort; our groups need to be prepared to get a legal injunction against the Federal government in the event amnesty should be passed. If nothing else than to force the issue on the ballot for LEGAL American to vote on. Whether it be George Bush, Hillary Clinton, McCain, Kennedy; we need to be prepared to stop them in their tracks if amnesty is passed.

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/n ... crets.html

Government increasingly using 'state secrets' as a legal tactic
Privilege being used to derail lawsuits, some legal experts said.
By Scott Shane
THE NEW YORK TIMES

Sunday, June 04, 2006

WASHINGTON — Facing a wave of litigation challenging its eavesdropping at home and its handling of terror suspects abroad, the Bush administration is increasingly turning to a legal tactic that swiftly torpedoes most lawsuits: the state secrets privilege.

In recent weeks, officials have used the privilege to win the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by a German man who was abducted and held in Afghanistan for five months and to ask the courts to throw out three legal challenges to the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program.

But civil liberties groups and some scholars say the privilege claim, in which the government says that any discussion of a lawsuit's accusations would endanger national security, has short-circuited judicial scrutiny and public debate for some central controversies of the post-Sept. 11 era.

The privilege has been asserted by the Justice Department more frequently under President Bush than almost all of his predecessors: in 19 cases, the same number as during the entire eight-year presidency of Ronald Reagan, the previous record-holder, according to a count by William Weaver, a political scientist at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Although the privilege, defined by a 1953 Supreme Court ruling, was once used to shield sensitive documents or witnesses from disclosure, it is now often used to try to snuff out lawsuits at their inception, Weaver and other legal specialists say.

"This is a very powerful weapon for the executive branch," said Weaver, a co-author of one of the few scholarly articles examining the privilege. "Once it's asserted, in almost every instance, it stops the case cold."

Robert Chesney, a law professor at Wake Forest University who is studying the recent use of the privilege, said the administration's strategy "raises profound legal and policy questions that will be the subject of intense debate for the foreseeable future."

Some members of Congress also have doubts about the way the privilege has been used. A measure approved by the House Government Reform Committee would limit its use in blocking whistle-blowers' lawsuits.

"If the very people you're suing are the ones who get to use the state secrets privilege, it's a stacked deck," said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., who proposed the measure and has campaigned against excessive government secrecy.

Yet courts have almost always deferred to the secrecy claims; Weaver said he thinks the last unsuccessful assertion of the privilege was in 1993.

Brian Roehrkasse, a Justice Department spokesman, said he could not discuss any specific case. But he said the state secrets privilege "is well-established in federal law and has been asserted many times in our nation's history to protect our nation's secrets."

Other defenders of the administration's increasing use of the privilege say it merely reflects proliferating lawsuits.

Under Bush, the secrets privilege has been used to block a lawsuit by a translator at the FBI, Sibel Edmonds, who was fired after accusing colleagues of security breaches; to stop a discrimination lawsuit filed by Jeffrey Sterling, a Farsi-speaking African American officer at the CIA; and to derail a patent claim involving a coupler for fiber-optic cable, evidently to guard technical details of government eavesdropping.

Such cases can make for oddities. Mark Zaid, who has represented Edmonds, Sterling and others in privilege cases, said he had seen his legal briefs classified by the government and had been barred from contacting a client because his phone line was not secure.

Another frustration of the plaintiffs is that so much information about the ostensible state secrets is already public. The NSA program, for example, has been described and defended in numerous public statements by Bush and other top officials and in a Justice Department legal analysis.

In an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit challenging the program, Ann Beeson, the group's associate legal director, acknowledged that some facts might need to remain secret.

"But you don't need those facts to hear this case," she said. "All the facts needed to try this case are already public."

See http://www.constitution.org/grossack/bivens.htm

Bivens v. Six Unknown Narcotics Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971).

Bivens has had more impact on the accountability of federal government officials than perhaps any other decision in the history of American law. The central issue in Bivens was whether the Fourth Amendment of the Federal constitution created an implied right of action. This was decided affirmatively in a claim for damages by individuals whose home was searched unreasonably (and hence unconstitutionally) by federal narcotic agents. Jurisdiction was not claimed under title 42 U.S. Code § 1983, which as of this writing, has not yet been held to extend liability to federal officials in most circumstances. Instead the enabling legislation was found under Title 28 U.S. Code § 1331 which grants general jurisdiction on the basis of a federal question.

The lawsuit will not succeed. It's just more left-wing posturing by the nutty 9th -- a court that rules by pure caprice more often than not. If the thing actually goes to trial in California, a loss by the government will almost certainly be stricken down by SCOTUS.

Having said that, I don't agree that the federal government should be above the law and exempt from lawsuit. The suit in question, however, is ludicrous and is typical of the leftist fantasy-world in which an all-powerful government is responsible for everything right down to the climate. Setting aside for the moment the notion of actual free enterprise and taking at face value the ridiculous notion that the federal government should not only be responsible for saving man from himself, but that its failure to accomplish the goal is legally actionable, the lawsuit dismisses the very strong evidence that "global warming" is not the result of any anthropogenic source, but rather the natural fluctuations in the sun's output. We recently saw a solar maximum stronger than any on record, and that was followed by waves of solar winds and solar flares that went off the scales that had previously been sufficient to measure such events. An examination of the exact correlation between solar output and Earth mean surface temperature is sufficient to erase any doubt as to the origin of "global warming," yet the rabid environmentalists and anti-industrialists continue to press their radical agenda with surprising success, thanks in large part to the support of the left-leaning mainstream press.

Also, before we get too worked up over global warming, regardless of cause, let's bear in mind that mankind only recently emerged from a mini- ice age that caused untold human misery. That cooling period, which began circa 1300 AD and lasted into the Industrial Age, was responsible for famines and pestilence and the decline and fall of numerous cultures. Because we don't have sophisticated temperature readings predating that little ice age, we don't even know that what we are seeing today isn't more in line with the historical norm. Suing the government because a planet whose average temperatures have been shown to fluctuate wildly without any help from mankind has seen a rise of about 1 degree over a century of industrialization is the height of reactionism and a farce not worthy of the ink spent on it.

If we got a million peeps or more to sign on to a class action suit, the news media would have a field day; and public scrutiny would force our government come out of the immunity closet. And that of course is only if the Senate and President intimidate the Congress so much, they are forced to come up with some type of unacceptable compromise.

There are many ways you, I and our children's lives have changed for the worse because of the broken borders and the lack of enforcement by our "leaders". Those we have entrusted to serve the will of the people.

We could come up with quite a list of ways in which America and Americans have been damaged.

Let's hope it doesn't come to that.... let's hope Congress stands firm.

the news media would have a field day;

I wish that were true. Look what they did with the most important suit in the history of this country... Mariana's 9/11 vs the whole group

It is buried! One paper had the courage to report it.

OK....stupid question here:

IF citizens and cities can sue for global warming, why can't we get an attorney and SUE over this whole illegal alien situation?