Right Remedy, Wrong House

IJ Asks the Supreme Court to Hold Federal Officers Accountable for Botched Raid

On April 29, 2025, IJ will argue before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Trina Martin, an innocent victim of a wrong-house raid conducted by an FBI SWAT team in Atlanta, Georgia. The case revolves around the meaning of the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), a federal statute that allows people to sue the United States for damages arising from intentional torts committed by federal employees, including assault, battery, or false imprisonment. The Supreme Court’s resolution of this case will shape the future of federal accountability. If Ms. Martin prevails, it will reaffirm a core promise of the FTCA: Victims have a remedy for damages caused by the intentional torts of federal employees. If she does not, it could embolden expansive readings of immunity and threaten public confidence in the government’s willingness to answer for preventable wrongs.

The legal issues in this case begin with sovereign immunity—a doctrine transplanted from the British monarchy to the young American republic, which prevents the government from being sued without its consent. Until the mid-1940s, sovereign immunity barred people injured by federal employees from suing the United States for monetary damages. Instead, victims were required to sue individual federal officers and employees who were responsible for the harm. But because individual officers typically lacked the financial resources to pay significant damage awards when found liable, even plaintiffs who prevailed in these individual-officer suits were effectively left without any remedy. A victim’s only remaining option was asking Congress to enact a “private bill” that waived sovereign immunity and provided monetary relief to the individual victim. The result: Every year, Congress was inundated with hundreds of private bills requesting monetary relief for injuries caused by judgment-proof federal employees. This system of individual-officer suits and ad hoc private bills—direct consequences of sovereign immunity barring tort suits against federal employees—proved unfair and unworkable.

In 1946, Congress enacted the FTCA, which generally waived the federal government’s sovereign immunity from lawsuits seeking monetary relief for torts committed by federal employees. However, the FTCA also includes several exceptions that preserved sovereign immunity for some types of claims. Two of those exceptions are relevant in Martin: (1) the “intentional-tort exception,” which reinstated sovereign immunity for claims arising out of certain intentional torts, like assault or battery; and (2) the “discretionary-function exception,” which reinstated sovereign immunity for claims based on a federal employee’s exercise or failure to exercise a discretionary function or duty—essentially, higher-level policy decisions like allocating resources or balancing institutional priorities. Because the FTCA reinstated sovereign immunity for claims arising from federal employees’ intentional torts, victims of such acts were left with unworkable, ineffective pre-FTCA remedies.

In 1974, Congress amended the FTCA in response to two notorious federal raids in Collinsville, Illinois, where innocent families were victimized by “wrong-house” drug busts. These events sparked public outrage, showing that the intentional-tort exception left people injured by federal law enforcement without recourse. To fix that, lawmakers created what is now known as the “law-enforcement proviso,” which re-waived sovereign immunity for specific intentional torts—assault, battery, false imprisonment, false arrest, abuse of process, and malicious prosecution—when committed by federal law enforcement officers. Although the catalyst was Collinsville, Congress’s language was broad: The proviso was not confined to wrong-house raids or drug cases. Instead, it authorized FTCA suits for any enumerated intentional tort that federal law-enforcement officers commit while acting under color of their official duties. By legislating in this more general way, Congress ensured that the FTCA could address a spectrum of grave, officer-driven harms.

The same kind of wrong-house nightmare befell Ms. Martin in suburban Atlanta. Early one morning, a heavily armed FBI SWAT team executed a warrant—supposedly for the home of a gang member—but they got the address wrong. The officers used a battering ram to break down Ms. Martin’s door, hurled a flashbang grenade into the living room, and entered with guns drawn. Within minutes, Ms. Martin and her partner were forcibly restrained, while her seven-year-old child cowered in terror. As soon as the agents realized their mistake, they dashed down the street to find the real target, leaving the Martin family traumatized and their front entrance in shambles. Ms. Martin sued the federal government under the FTCA—hoping to hold it accountable and recover for the negligence, assault, battery, and false imprisonment she and her loved ones endured.

Instead, the Eleventh Circuit dismissed Ms. Martin’s suit on two grounds. First, although the law enforcement proviso explicitly waives immunity for intentional torts by federal officers, the court held that the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution barred all of Ms. Martin’s intentional-tort claims. The Supremacy Clause states that federal law supersedes conflicting state law, making this a startling conclusion. According to the court, the federal government cannot be liable under the FTCA—a federal statute—if an officer’s tortious actions promote any federal law enforcement policy. As an amicus brief submitted by Members of Congress explains, however, “nothing in the [Supremacy] Clause or any other provision of the Constitution forbids Congress from creating federal causes of action that incorporate state law, as it has done in the FTCA and a range of other statutes.” Paradoxically, the Eleventh Circuit transformed the Supremacy Clause—a safeguard of Congress’s legislative power—into an obstacle blocking the operation of a federal law passed pursuant to that power.

Second, the Eleventh Circuit tossed Ms. Martin’s negligence claim under the discretionary function exception, reasoning that planning and executing a search warrant—even incorrectly—involves discretionary decisions that should be shielded from judicial second-guessing. But treating a wrong-house raid as a high-level, policy-laden discretionary function makes little sense, especially when Congress was motivated to enact the FTCA’s law enforcement proviso in response to precisely these kinds of ground-level intentional torts. By reintroducing sovereign immunity for intentional torts caused by federal officers’ basic errors and mistakes, the Eleventh Circuit read the proviso out of the FTCA, depriving people like Ms. Martin of the remedy designed by Congress. 

Ultimately, the Eleventh Circuit’s holding revives the very problems that Congress sought to address by enacting and amending the FTCA. Congress plainly sought to grant victims of wrong-house raids a remedy under the FTCA, yet the Supremacy Clause and the discretionary function exception have been read to foreclose such suits when the officers were arguably furthering “federal policy” or exercising “discretion.”

A victory for Ms. Martin would restore the very accountability Congress envisioned when it enacted and expanded the FTCA to cover law enforcement misconduct. By confirming that victims can indeed hold the government accountable for intentional torts, her success would empower all those seeking redress for wrongful federal actions, pushing back against runaway immunity doctrines that threaten to deny justice to countless others.

John Wrench is the Assistant Director of the Center for Judicial Engagement at the Institute for Justice