Supreme Court unanimously rules against government in No Fly List case

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The Supreme Court unanimously ruled Tuesday that a man’s challenge to his former placement on the No Fly List can move forward, finding the government failed to show his lawsuit is moot.

Yonas Fikre, a U.S. citizen who previously resided in Sudan, claimed his placement on the list was unlawful and sued the FBI.

The government later removed him from the list and signaled it was unlikely he would be readded. It then contended Fikre’s lawsuit was moot as a result and should be tossed.

The government warned that not declaring lawsuits like Fikre’s moot at the onset could require the government to disclose classified information. The Supreme Court rejected that assertion, enabling Fikre’s case to move ahead.
“Necessarily, our judgment is a provisional one,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the court’s opinion.

“Just because the government has not yet demonstrated that Mr. Fikre’s case is moot does not mean it will never be able to do so,” the conservative justice continued. “This case comes to us in a preliminary posture, framed only by uncontested factual allegations and a terse declaration. As the case unfolds, the complaint’s allegations will be tested rather than taken as true, and different facts may emerge that may call for a different conclusion.”

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