Court Says No-Fly-List Case is Not Moot

The Supreme Court ruled today that a plaintiff's challenge to his inclusion on the N0-Fly List was not moot even after the government removed him from the List, because the government didn't adequately establish that it wouldn't re-list him in the future. The ruling sends the case back to the lower court for further proceedings . . . and for the government to try again to show that it won't relist him.

The case, FBI v. Fikre, arose when Yonas Fikre, a U.S. citizen on business in Sudan, learned from FBI agents that he was on the No-Fly List and couldn't return to the U.S. The agents offered to take him off the List if he agreed to serve as an informant and report on members of his religious community. Fikre refused.

Fikre later traveled to the UAE, where authorities arrested, imprisoned, and tortured him, and questioned him about his Portland, Oregon, mosque. Authorities held Fikre for 106 days, then flew him to Sweden, where he remained until February 2015, when the Swedish government returned him to Portland.

While in Sweden, Fikre sued, arguing that the government violated due process, among other things. He sought a declaratory judgment and an injunction prohibiting the government from keeping him on the No-Fly List.

In May 2016, the government notified Fikre that it removed him from the List, but didn't provide any further explanation. The district court granted the government's motion to dismiss the case as moot, but the Ninth Circuit reversed. On remand, the government entered a declaration stating that Fikre "will not be placed on the No Fly List in the future based on the currently available information." The district court again dismissed the case, but the Ninth Circuit again reversed.

The Court agreed with the Ninth Circuit that the case isn't moot. The Court emphasized that under the voluntary-cessation exception to mootness, the defendant bears the "formidable burden" * * * "'to establish' that it cannot reasonably be expected to resume its challenged conduct--whether the suit happens to be new or long lingering, and whether the challenged conduct might recur immediately or later at some more propitious moment." The Court noted that "a party's repudiation of its past conduct may sometimes help demonstrate that conduct is unlikely to recur." But "[w]hat matter is not whether a defendant repudiates its past actions, but what repudiation can prove about its future conduct. It is on that consideration alone--the potential for a defendant's future conduct--that we rest our judgment." The Court held that the government declaration simply didn't meet these standards.

That's not to say that the government can't meet the standards on remand, and the ruling gives the government another shot, on mootness or any other aspect of Article III justiciability (or on some national-security ground, and ultimately the merits, of course).

Justice Alito concurred, joined by Justice Kavanaugh, "to clarify my understanding that our decision does not suggest that the Government must disclose classified information to Mr. Fikre, his attorney, or a court to show that this case is moot."