FBI

Billy Binion | 11.4.2024 5:34 PM

One of the more common mantras you hear about the federal court system is that its judges should not be making law—aka legislating from the bench—but should be interpreting and applying the law as it was written. A new case that may go before the Supreme Court would serve as a particularly loud reminder of that.

A bipartisan group of congresspeople—including Sens. Rand Paul (R–Ky.), Ron Wyden (D–Ore.), and Cynthia Lummis (R–Wyo.), along with Reps. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.), Nikema Williams (D–Ga.), Harriet Hageman (R–Wyo.), and Dan Bishop (R–N.C.)—are urging the high court to take up the case, which centers around a family whose home was wrongly raided by the FBI in the middle of the night and who were then denied the right to sue for damages.*

But the reason the family was denied was particularly perverse, the congresspeople wrote in a recent brief to the high court, arguing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit turned the relevant law on its head when it blocked Curtrina Martin, the plaintiff, from suing.

On an early morning in 2017, Martin and her then-fiance, Hilliard Toi Cliatt, were awoken by the FBI detonating a flash grenade in their home and........

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