‘Preserving individual liberty’: High court asked to confirm ‘no one is above the law’ principle

Democrats long have used their claim, “No one is above the law” against President Donald Trump.

That included back when they were trying twice, unsuccessfully, to impeach him and remove him from office.

That slogan actually now has come back to dog Democrats, as there is a long list of party members now facing potential charges for mortgage fraud and other claims, not to mention charges that may come out of the Department of Justice investigations into the “Russiagate” conspiracy theory that party members promoted with false claims for years.

But now the Institute for Justice is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to issue a ruling that makes the “No one is above the law” a precedent to be used across America.

“Constitutional guarantees mean little if the government can break them without consequences,” said IJ lawyer Anya Bidwell. “That’s why, since the country’s founding, federal officials could be sued for violating people’s rights. It is imperative we hold on to these sacred principles under current circumstances.”

The precedent being sought means access to judicial remedies for those whose rights are violated by federal officials.

“Such remedies were a hallmark of the country’s original constitutional design, as a method of implementing the protections of the Bill of Rights. But over time, the government has sought to undermine and eliminate that foundational guarantee of individual liberty. The judiciary should not go along with the government’s efforts to force on the country a system of federal impunity,” explained the legal team.

The brief explains the country’s original system of federal accountability has been largely upended by a series of statutes and judicial decisions.

One statute the brief notes, the Federal Tort Claims Act, does in fact provide relief when government employees inflict harm.

In the case at issue, however, the government is arguing that the FTCA forecloses remedies where Texas property owner Lebene Konan alleges that postal officials engaged in a pattern of racial discrimination and economic interference against her by, among other things, refusing to deliver mail to her and her tenants and changing the locks on her mailbox.

As the Supreme Court confirmed in 1882, if the “courts cannot give remedy” for such harms, our government no longer, “has a just claim to well-regulated liberty and the protection of personal rights.”

The IJ is urging the court to resist government attempts to shut down remedies.

The brief recounts several instances of lower courts eliminating remedies for outrageous rights violations by federal officials, including the brutal attack of an innocent student in Michigan and the false imprisonment of innocent teenage Somali refugees in Minnesota. And it discusses the case of a traumatic predawn raid of an innocent family’s home in Georgia, in which IJ recently secured a Supreme Court victory regarding the scope of the FTCA.

“With federal police being deployed in cities around the country, it’s vital for the judiciary to ensure that federal officials cannot operate with impunity,” said IJ Attorney Jaba Tsitsuashvili. “The FTCA serves that function and preserves individual liberty.”