WASHINGTON—Before the sun rose over Atlanta one morning, Trina Martin, her seven-year-old son Gabe, and her partner Toi Cliatt were jolted awake by the sound of a flashbang grenade exploding in their living room. Toi, fearing that the home was being robbed, pulled Trina into the bedroom closet and reached for his legally owned shotgun. Just as he was about to grab it, an FBI agent barged in, threw him to the ground, and began interrogating him and Trina. All the while, Gabe was separated from his mother as officers stormed into his bedroom with guns drawn.
When Toi told the agents his address, it dawned on them that they had raided the wrong house. The FBI had a warrant—for a house with a different address number on a different street. Now, the Institute for Justice (IJ) is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to revive their lawsuit for accountability, which has been thrown out by the lower courts.
“My son was alone in his room, trembling in fear with an armed agent standing over him. Those are memories neither he nor I will ever be able to shake,” said Trina. “Gabe transitioned from being a happy, active, and outgoing child to becoming timid, introverted, and living in constant fear. This experience made him acutely aware of death, as he repeatedly expressed that he believed he was going to die. What happened to us was wrong, but there’s been no accountability. This shouldn’t happen in America.”
After realizing 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 in this instance 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 therapy. With no other way to recover for these injuries, Trina, Gabe, and Toi filed a lawsuit under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA).
Congress created the FTCA so that people harmed by federal employees can be made whole. But for the past seven years, the government has fought hard to make sure it doesn’t have to compensate Trina, Gabe, and Toi.
“The FBI can’t undo the damage it caused by raiding the wrong house, but the government needs to pay for its mistake,” said Dylan Moore, an attorney at IJ. “Congress created the FTCA to give people like Trina, Gabe, and Toi a remedy. Courts should not do backflips to read that remedy out of existence.”
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 expanded the law to make it clear that the actions of federal law enforcement officers were included.
But the FTCA includes a host of exceptions, and circuit courts can’t agree on when they apply. In Trina, Gabe, and Toi’s case, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the FTCA’s “discretionary function exception” defeated some of their claims. That exception shields the United States from liability when a federal employee exercises discretion to advance federal policy. But FBI agents don’t have discretion to raid the wrong house. And doing so certainly does not further any federal policy. Other courts have recognized this. Had Trina, Gabe, and Toi brought their lawsuit in most other circuits, the discretionary function exception likely wouldn’t apply at all.
The 11th Circuit also found that Trina, Gabe, and Toi’s lawsuit was barred by the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution. No other circuit has taken this position—and for good reason. 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 statute, so there is no conflict for the Supremacy Clause to settle.
“The federal government made a terrible—albeit easily avoidable—mistake when it kicked in an innocent family’s door,” said Patrick Jaicomo, a senior attorney at IJ. “The Supreme Court should take this case to ensure that the government, not the innocent family, pays the price for the mistake. Congress could not be clearer that it should.”
IJ’s Project on Immunity and Accountability is dedicated to the simple idea that if the people must follow the law, our government must do so as well. IJ is currently representing a family in South Bend, Indiana, and another family in a Dallas, Texas, suburb who both suffered from wrong-house SWAT raids.