Martin v. United States: A Legal Explainer

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. (A tort is just a legal term for a harm to an individual.) The Supreme Court’s resolution of this case will shape the future of federal accountability. If Trina 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 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 money damages. Instead, victims were required to sue the individual federal employees who were responsible for the harm. But because individual officers typically lacked the money to pay significant damage awards when found liable, even people who prevailed in court against individual officers 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 Trina 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 Trina’s door, hurled a flashbang grenade into the living room, and entered with guns drawn. Within minutes, Trina 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. Trina 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 Trina’s suit. Although the law enforcement proviso explicitly waives immunity for intentional torts by federal officers, the court held that that the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution barred all of Trina’s intentional tort claims. The Supremacy Clause states that federal law takes precedence over conflicting state law, making this an absurd conclusion. According to the court, the federal government cannot be liable under the FTCA—a federal statute—if an officer’s actions promote any federal law enforcement policy. It went on to toss Trina’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. Together, these rulings create a stark tension: 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.”

That’s why support for Trina has poured in from across the ideological spectrum. A bipartisan group of senators and representatives, a gun rights group, the ACLU, and more have all submitted friend-of-the-court briefs asking the Supreme Court to decide in favor of Trina and IJ.

A victory for Trina 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.