Court Hears Arguments in ACLU No-Fly Class-Action Lawsuit

[seemslikeadream]

ACLU Says Government List is Flawed and Violates Rights of Passengers

SEATTLE-At a hearing here today, the American Civil Liberties Union presented arguments to advance the first nationwide class-action lawsuit challenging the government’s controversial No-Fly lists, which are distributed to all airlines with instructions to detain or interrogate passengers whose names match thousands of names listed.

"As a result of flawed and ineffective No-Fly lists, innocent passengers are being singled out virtually every time they fly and subjected to delays, interrogations and even detentions," said Reginald T. Shuford, an ACLU senior staff attorney who is lead counsel in the case. "The government’s mismanagement of the No-Fly list not only violates the constitutional rights of the innocent Americans who have no way of clearing themselves from the list, but expending resources to repeatedly detain and interrogate individuals already verified as innocent is counterproductive to national security."

Today’s hearing came in response to a move by the government to prevent the case from being heard in district court. Attorneys for the Transportation Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security claim that the district court lacks jurisdiction to review the case. However, the ACLU said that this motion is an attempt by the government to prevent the case from going forward.

"The government is saying that American trial courts have no power to review TSA policies," said Aaron Caplan of the ACLU of Washington. "The request for dismissal is an attempt to avoid any meaningful judicial review of government practices."

more
http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=16955&c=206

[jilln]

1. good news.

Maybe now I won't be asked "What organizations do you belong to" when I come back on international flights.

For some reason I'm not a threat flying around WITHIN the country, only when I come back from somewhere else.