Petitions of the day

Issue: (1) Whether the Court of Appeals, in finding that Respondents’ Fifth Amendment claims did not arise in a “new context” for purposes of implying a remedy under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, erred by defining “context” at too high a level of generality where Respondents challenge the actions taken in the immediate aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001 regarding the detention of persons illegally in the United States whom the FBI had arrested in connection with its investigation of the September 11 attacks, thereby implicating concerns regarding national security, immigration, and the separation of powers; (2) whether the Court of Appeals, in denying qualified immunity to Petitioner Ziglar erred: (A) by failing to focus on the specific context of the case to determine whether the violative nature of Mr. Ziglar’s specific conduct was at the time clearly established, instead defining the “established law” at the high level of generality that this Court has warned against; and (B) by finding that even though the applicability of 42 U.S.C. § 1985(3) to the actions of federal officials like Petitioner Ziglar was not clearly established at the time in question, Respondents nevertheless could maintain a § 1985(3) claim against him so long as his conduct violated some other clearly established law; and (3) whether the Court of Appeals erred in finding that Respondents’ Fourth Amended Complaint met the pleading requirements of Ashcroft v. Iqbal , and related cases, because that complaint relied on allegations of hypothetical possibilities, conclusional assumptions, and unsupported insinuations of discriminatory intent that, at best, are merely consistent with Petitioner Ziglar’s liability, but fall short of stating plausible claims.

Issue: (1) Whether the judicially inferred damages remedy under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, should be extended to the novel context of this case, which seeks to hold the former Attorney General and Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) personally liable for policy decisions made about national-security and immigration in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks; and (2) whether the former Attorney General and FBI Director are entitled to qualified immunity for their alleged role in the treatment of respondents, because it was not clearly established that aliens legitimately arrested during the September 11 investigation could not be held in restrictive conditions until the FBI confirmed that they had no connections with terrorism; and (3) whether respondents’ allegations that the Attorney General and FBI Director personally condoned the implementation of facially constitutional policies because of an invidious animus against Arabs and Muslims are plausible, as required by Ashcroft v. Iqbal, in light of the obvious alternative explanation—identified by the Court in Iqbal—that their actions were motivated by a concern that, absent fuller investigation, the government would unwittingly permit a dangerous individual to leave the United States.

Issue: (1) Whether, as the Second Circuit held, the judicially implied cause of action for damages against individual officials recognized in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, extends to detentions of foreign nationals after the September 11 attacks; (2) whether qualified immunity was property denied, notwithstanding the specific circumstances confronted by petitioners—including the FBI’s terrorism designations for respondents—because the Constitution “clearly” prohibits any “condition of pretrial detention not reasonably related to a legitimate governmental objective,” or imposed “because of . . . race, ethnicity, religion, and/or national origin;” and (3) whether the allegations against Hasty and Sherman (the Warden and Associate Warden at the Metropolitan Detention Center)—such as the assertion that they “knew” the FBI’s terrorism designations for respondents were wrong but imposed otherwise mandatory confinement conditions because they had discriminatory intent—are sufficiently plausible to state a claim under Ashcroft v. Iqbal.