Telecom customers may sue government over wiretapping, says US 9th Circuit Court ( here's those 'liberal' courts protecting our rights again )
latimes.com
By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times December 29, 2011, 6:04 p.m.
Residential telephone customers can sue the government for allegedly eavesdropping on their private communications in a warrantless "dragnet of ordinary Americans," a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.
Lawyers for customers of AT&T and other telecommunications providers hailed the ruling for allowing the courts to decide whether widespread warrantless wiretapping violated their constitutional rights.
"It's huge. It means six years after we started trying, the American people may get a judicial ruling on whether the massive spying done on them since 9/11 is legal or not," said Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which was among those fighting for a day in court.
The three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, however, upheld dismissal of other cases that sought to hold the telecommunications companies liable, citing Congress' decision to grant them retroactive immunity.
The Obama administration had succeeded two years ago in getting a federal judge in San Francisco to dismiss the lawsuits on grounds that state secrets in the fight against terrorism could be revealed in any court examination of the domestic spying operation. Justice Department lawyers reiterated that argument before the 9th Circuit panel in April.
But the panel reinstated the lawsuit brought by Petaluma, Calif., resident and author Carolyn Jewel and sent it back to U.S. District Court in San Francisco for trial, concluding that the plaintiffs had the right to sue the government.
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