Today, the Institute for Justice (IJ) filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to ensure that individuals whose rights are violated by federal officials have meaningful access to judicial remedies. Such remedies were a hallmark of the country’s original constitutional design, as a method of implementing the protections of the Bill of Rights. But over time, the government has sought to undermine and eliminate that foundational guarantee of individual liberty. The judiciary should not go along with the government’s efforts to force on the country a system of federal impunity.

“Constitutional guarantees mean little if the government can break them without consequences,” said IJ Senior Attorney Anya Bidwell. “That’s why, since the country’s founding, federal officials could be sued for violating people’s rights. It is imperative we hold on to these sacred principles under current circumstances.”

As IJ’s brief explains, the country’s original system of federal accountability has been largely upended by a series of statutes and judicial decisions. But one statute—the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA)—often provides relief, in the form of claims against the government when its employees inflict harm. In the case at issue, however, the government is arguing that the FTCA forecloses remedies where Texas property owner Lebene Konan alleges that postal officials engaged in a pattern of racial discrimination and economic interference against her by, among other things, refusing to deliver mail to her and her tenants and changing the locks on her mailbox.

As the Supreme Court put it in 1882, if the “courts cannot give remedy,” for such harms, our government no longer, “has a just claim to well-regulated liberty and the protection of personal rights.” So IJ urges today’s court to reject the government’s efforts to misread the FTCA to foreclose such fundamental judicial remedies, in this case and cases to come.

The brief recounts several instances of lower courts eliminating remedies for outrageous rights violations by federal officials, including the brutal attack of an innocent student in Michigan and the false imprisonment of innocent teenage Somali refugees in Minnesota. And it discusses the case of a traumatic predawn raid of an innocent family’s home in Georgia, in which IJ recently secured a Supreme Court victory regarding the scope of the FTCA.

IJ is also currently litigating against claims of federal impunity involving the imprisonment of an innocent woman in Arizona and the seizure and subsequent coverup of a small business’s protest apparel in California. Most recently, IJ filed a claim for accountability on behalf of an innocent Army veteran who was assaulted and detained by immigration officers in Los Angeles.

“With federal police being deployed in cities around the country, it’s vital for the judiciary to ensure that federal officials cannot operate with impunity,” said IJ Attorney Jaba Tsitsuashvili. “The FTCA serves that function and preserves individual liberty. The Supreme Court should say so, with respect to officials of all stripes.”

Ms. Konan’s case is scheduled for oral argument on October 8.