WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a setback Friday to three Muslim men in Orange County, California, who have been suing the FBI for spying on their mosques in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In a unanimous but narrowly written opinion, the high court said the government may invoke the “state secrets” privilege to block such a lawsuit from proceeding and ruled the current law does not authorize a judge to examine the supposedly secret information pertaining to the case in order to determine whether it would be relevant.
The ruling in FBI vs. Fazaga rejects a compromise set out by the 9th Circuit Court, which said a judge acting under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act may weigh the evidence behind closed doors. This was seen as a way to allow the lawsuit against the FBI to proceed, but without revealing intelligence information about the basis for the surveillance.
