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Experts said the decision was
important in that it showed how hard it has become for civil rights groups and
private citizens to challenge the government’s counterterrorism policies. The
reason being that the majority of the Court said that the journalists and human
rights groups who challenged the law were not able to show how they had been
harmed by it and thus lacked the standing necessary to bring such a challenge.
The groups that brought the suit
argued that they had standing because they feared that in the future they might
be the victims of such government surveillance. The majority of the Court
decided this possible future threat was too tangential to provide standing.
Another tactic taken by the plaintiffs was to argue that they had incurred
considerable expenses to avoid potential surveillance by the government, for
instance, some journalists paid to fly to meet sources in person rather than risk
talking over the phone. Alito, writing for the majority, said that the
plaintiffs could not manufacture standing by purposely incurring costs.
The plaintiffs further argued
that they should be allowed to bring the case given that only the government,
the defendant in the case, knows whether the plaintiffs were surveilled and
thus whether they were damaged. The Court rejected this idea too, saying that
it is the plaintiffs’ responsibility to prove standing, not the defendant’s job
to disprove it.
The case revolved around the FISA
legislation which Congress initially passed in the wake of 9/11 and later
amended in 2008. The Act gave broad powers to the executive branch to conduct
surveillance of individuals overseas without going through the process of
getting a warrant. The plaintiffs brought suit saying the Act violated their
rights under the Fourth Amendment by allowing the government to intercept
emails and telephone calls without a warrant.
The majority said it was
satisfied that the wiretapping program was subject to safeguards including
supervision by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court which meets in
secret and is supposed to review actions taken under FISA. Alito wrote that it
was possible that some day someone might have standing to challenge the law.
The example he gave was if the government decided to use information gathered
under the program in a criminal prosecution then it might allow the victim of
that surveillance to bring a claim with sufficient standing. Alito appeared to
not be concerned that the realistic chance of such a situation happening was
slim to none.
Read:
“Justices
Turn Back Challenge to Broader U.S. Eavesdropping,”
by Adam Liptak, published at NYTimes.com.
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