WASHINGTON—A bipartisan (and bicameral) group of Congress members has joined together to urge the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case of an Atlanta family trying to hold the FBI accountable for wrongly raiding their home. The brief from Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Representatives Harriet Hageman (R-WY), Nikema Williams (D-GA), Thomas Massie (R-KY), and Dan Bishop (R-NC) asks the Court to reverse an appeals court decision that denies the family any remedy under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA).

Congress created the FTCA to provide a remedy when federal employees cause harm. But for the past seven years, the government has fought hard to make sure it doesn’t have to compensate victims Trina Martin, Gabe Watson, and Toi Cliatt for the harm the FBI caused through its wrong-house raid. The Institute for Justice (IJ) is appealing their case to the Supreme Court and welcomes the support of the Members of Congress.

“Congress amended the FTCA, specifically to ensure that victims of federal wrong-house raids have a remedy” said IJ Senior Attorney Patrick Jaicomo. “In today’s brief, members of Congress not only confirm the availability of that remedy but criticize the Eleventh Circuit for taking it away.”

“It is encouraging to have so many Members of Congress recognize that we deserve justice,” said Trina. “I especially want to thank Congresswoman Nikema Williams, who represents my district in Atlanta. This feels like a big step forward to getting our case heard by the Supreme Court.”

In 2017, Trina, her then-seven-year-old son Gabe, and her partner Toi were jolted awake by the sound of an FBI SWAT team breaking into their home. The federal agents detonated a flashbang grenade in the living room, stormed in, and interrogated the family at gunpoint. But the officers had the wrong place—their warrant was for a different house on a different street.

Once they realized their mistake, the FBI agents quickly left and raided the correct house. Afterward, one of the agents returned, apologized, and gave Toi his supervisor’s business card to discuss paying for the damage. Toi called the number on the card, but it quickly became clear that the federal government did not plan to help.

While insurance paid for the damage to the house, the government refused to cover costs from the trauma inflicted on Trina, Gabe, and Toi—including lost wages and years of therapy necessary to come to terms with the raid. With no other way to recover for these injuries, they filed a lawsuit under the FTCA.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (which covers Alabama, Florida, and Georgia) held that Trina, Gabe, and Toi’s lawsuit was barred by the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution. The Supremacy Clause simply declares that if a federal law and a state law conflict, the federal law wins. But the FTCA is a federal law. It does not—it cannot—conflict with the Supremacy Clause.

The Members’ brief attacks the 11th Circuit’s faulty reasoning head-on: “The court of appeals’ approach sets the Supremacy Clause at war with itself by refusing to give effect to a duly enacted federal statute out of supposed concern for the supremacy of federal law.” In doing so, the court “undercuts the very primacy of federal law that the Supremacy Clause seeks to fortify.”

For most of the nation’s history, sovereign immunity barred people from suing the federal government for its employees’ actions. By passing the FTCA in the 1940s, Congress changed things. A landmark piece of legislation, the FTCA waived sovereign immunity for certain actions taken by federal employees that led to personal injury or property damage. Thirty years later—and explicitly in response to two wrong-house raids like the one Trina, Gabe, and Toi suffered—Congress amended the law to make clear that the actions of federal law enforcement officers were included.

As the Members of Congress explain, “the Constitution gives Congress alone the choice whether to waive sovereign immunity.” When it comes to wrong-house federal police raids, Congress has done just that. But by refusing to respect the legislature’s authority, the 11th Circuit “nullifies the FTCA in precisely the circumstances Congress most clearly intended it to apply.”

The Members’ brief concludes by noting that the appeals court decision means that the FTCA applies differently in the 11th Circuit than it does in the rest of the country: “Today, victims of wrong-home raids by federal officers in Collinsville, Illinois, may sue under the FTCA, but victims of an identical raid in Collinsville, Georgia, could not.” This is not the outcome Congress intended, and it is not an outcome the Supreme Court should uphold. The Members urge the Supreme Court to grant certiorari and address the “exceptionally important” questions that this case presents.