The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the FBI's bid to block a civil rights lawsuit that accused the agency of infiltrating mainstream mosques in Southern California and targeting Muslim Americans for surveillance because of their religion
The justices will take up the FBI's appeal of a lower court's 2019 ruling that let various claims made by the men move forward in the litigation. The Supreme Court will consider whether the bulk of the claims should be rejected based on the government's so-called state secrets privilege, a legal doctrine sometimes asserted when national security interests are invoked.
The lawsuit focuses upon a 14-month period in 2006 and 2007 when the FBI paid an informant named Craig Monteilh to gather information on Muslims as part of a post-Sept. 11 counterterrorism investigation. Monteilh met with Muslims in southern California, adopted a Muslim name and said he wanted to convert to Islam, according to court papers. Monteilh also recorded conversations and conducted surveillance, according to court papers.
In a 2012 ruling, a federal judge in California dismissed the claims against the FBI, determining that they were barred under the state secrets privilege. The court did permit claims accusing some individual FBI agents of violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, which regulates how the government conducts electronic surveillance.
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