Oakland Activist Will Appeal Federal Government’s Immunity from Constitutional Accountability

ARLINGTON, Va.—Entrepreneur and activist René Quiñonez will appeal the dismissal of his lawsuit challenging federal law enforcement’s baseless detention of his police-protest apparel and officers’ subsequent cover-up of what happened. The United States District Court for the Northern District of California held that Quiñonez and his small business have no path to accountability, no matter how egregiously federal law enforcement violated his Fourth Amendment or First Amendment rights. Represented by the Institute for Justice (IJ), Quiñonez and his family business, Movement Ink LLC, will ask the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse that outcome.

“Federal law enforcement should not be above the law,” said IJ Attorney Jaba Tsitsuashvili. “When federal officers violate constitutional rights, our constitutional system demands that the victims be made whole. But the Supreme Court and Congress have eroded that fundamental safeguard. Now is the time to reverse course and ensure that all federal officers must respect constitutional rights.”

The case spun out of the nationwide protests against police brutality during the summer of 2020. Movement Ink, a small screen-printing business run by Quiñonez and his family in Oakland, California, received orders for thousands of cloth facemasks emblazoned with protest speech, such as “Stop Killing Black People.” Quiñonez shipped the packages from the same post office he typically used, where the nature of his screen-printing business was well known. But instead of receiving their protest apparel, Movement Ink’s customers received notifications that the packages—containing nothing but cloth masks—had been “seized by law enforcement.”

Over two years of litigation, the federal government could not identify a reason to suspect Movement Ink, Mr. Quiñonez, their customers, or the packages of anything unlawful, either for the postal worker who diverted the packages or the federal law enforcement officers who detained the packages. Before deciding to detain the packages indefinitely, the officers made no attempt to call any of the senders or recipients, all of whom were clearly identified on the boxes.

Worse yet, after the seizures made national news, federal officers concocted a story about what happened. They tried to make it seem that someone other than the postal clerk who knew Mr. Quiñonez and the nature of his business had diverted the packages. But the postal employee who the officers tried to scapegoat made clear that that was a lie (with another postal employee independently confirming as much). The seizures and negative publicity destroyed Movement Ink’s business relationships and Mr. Quiñonez’s reputation.

“The government illegally detained my packages, tarnished my reputation, destroyed my business, and made up a story to cover it all up,” said Quiñonez. “That’s simply not right.”

And yet, the court held that nothing can be done about it. First, the court held that the individual officials cannot be held accountable under the so-called Bivens doctrine, which the Supreme Court recently held permits lawsuits against federal officials for violating constitutional rights only in an extremely narrow set of circumstances. Second, the court held that the government cannot be held accountable because the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA)—the federal statute authorizing lawsuits against the federal government for its officials’ unlawful acts—does not protect against the baseless detention of Movement Ink’s property, and because Movement Ink could not adequately prove exactly how much future business the government’s abuses cost the company.

“Immunizing federal misconduct places federal employees above the very Constitution that restricts their power and places them above the law they swear to uphold,” said IJ Senior Attorney Patrick Jaicomo.

On April 29, IJ will argue another FTCA case at the United States Supreme Court, seeking accountability for an innocent family whose house was raided by federal officers. Both cases are part of IJ’s Project on Immunity and Accountability, which seeks to eliminate barriers to the vindication of constitutional and statutory rights.