No Remedy for Torture Victims, Court Reaffirms

Steven D. Schwinn, John Marshall Law School

Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle (D.D.C.) yesterday reaffirmed that torture victims lack a remedy in the federal courts. Judge Huvelle applied circuit precedent and granted the government's motion to dismiss Mohammed Jawad's torture claims against government officials. The ruling ends Jawad's case, unless and until he appeals.

The case is not surprising, given the state of the law, but it is disturbing: it reaffirms (yet again) that torture victims lack a judicial remedy.

Jawad claimed that government officials authorized his torture at Guantanamo Bay, before and after designating him an "enemy combatant" and before releasing him as no longer "legally detainable" after over six years in detention. Jawad claimed that officials violated the Alien Tort Claims Act, the Federal Tort Claims Act, the Torture Victims Protection Act, and the Fifth and Eighth Amendment.

Judge Huvelle rejected all these claims. Judge Huvelle denied Jawad's FTCA claims, because she said that government officials were acting within the scope of their employment--torture, evidently, is within the scope of employment to maintain order and discipline at Guantanamo--and because the government's waiver of immunity under the FTCA doesn't apply outside the United States. Judge Huvelle denied the TVPA claim, because U.S. officials weren't acting under the law of a foreign nation, as required by the TVPA. And she denied Jawad's constitutional claims, because she said that special factors counseled against extending a Bivens remedy.

Judge Huvelle also ruled that Jawad's claims are foreclosed by the Military Commissions Act, which bars non-habeas claims against the government or its agents related to "conditions of confinement of an alien . . . who was properly detained as an enemy combatant . . . ." Judge Huvelle said that the government never disavowed its classification of Jawad as an enemy combatant, even though the government later said that he was no longer legally detainable.

The ruling is hardly a surprise, given circuit precedent and the state of the law. But it is disturbing: It says (yet again) that torture victims don't have a judicial remedy.