The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) petitioned for rehearing en banc on May 14, 2021 a three judge panel decision before the full 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after the panel unanimously ruled against CAIR's legal challenge to the Terror Watchlist.
Florida Family Association has prepared an email for you to send to urge all of the judges on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to make public safety and national security the priority in Anas Elhady v. Charles Kable. The judges in the three judge panel who ruled against CAIR are not included in this email prepared to be sent to full court.
See the full history of this litigation at the bottom of this article.
Click here to send your email to the full 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals except the three judge panel. (For Gmail, Yahoo and other email clients that require comma separation of addresses.) YAHOO works best in Yahoo Mobile App, not so well with internet browser.
Click here to send your email to the full 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals except the three judge panel. For Outlook and other email clients that require semicolon separation of addresses.)
These emails will open in your email browser because the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is blocking normal form emails sent through the Florida Family Association email server. If the above link does not open in your email browser or if the email is returned to you please prepare an email using the suggested subject line, content and email addresses provided below. Please feel free to change the wording.
Suggested subject line:
Please preserve as much of the Terror Screening Database as possible for the safety of the American people.
Suggested content:
United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
Honorable Circuit Court Judges,
I respectfully urge you not to give terrorists an advantage at the expense of the safety of American lives by affirming specific rules or unprecedented relief that may not work and could help terrorists in Anas Elhady v. Charles Kable. Requiring Government procedures for seeking redress for an individual’s alleged placement on the Terror Screening Database that go beyond what is necessary to satisfy Due Process could result in incorrect watchlist placement and jeopardize public safety.
Email String separated by commas
RLG@ca4.uscourts.gov,
PVN@ca4.uscourts.gov,
DGM@ca4.uscourts.gov,
WBT@ca4.uscourts.gov,
RBK@ca4.uscourts.gov,
GSA@ca4.uscourts.gov,
BMK@ca4.uscourts.gov,
JAW@ca4.uscourts.gov,
albert_diaz@ca4.uscourts.gov,
henry_floyd@ca4.uscourts.gov,
SDT@ca4.uscourts.gov,
PAH@ca4.uscourts.gov,
JNR@ca4.uscourts.gov,
dennis_shedd@ca4.uscourts.gov,
AJR@ca4.uscourts.gov
Email String separated by semicolons
RLG@ca4.uscourts.gov;
PVN@ca4.uscourts.gov;
DGM@ca4.uscourts.gov;
WBT@ca4.uscourts.gov;
RBK@ca4.uscourts.gov;
GSA@ca4.uscourts.gov;
BMK@ca4.uscourts.gov;
JAW@ca4.uscourts.gov;
albert_diaz@ca4.uscourts.gov;
henry_floyd@ca4.uscourts.gov;
SDT@ca4.uscourts.gov;
PAH@ca4.uscourts.gov;
JNR@ca4.uscourts.gov;
dennis_shedd@ca4.uscourts.gov;
AJR@ca4.uscourts.gov
Contact information:
Lewis F. Powell Jr. Courthouse & Annex
1100 East Main Street, Suite 501
Richmond, VA 23219
Chief Judge Roger L. Gregory
804-916-2700
RLG@ca4.uscourts.gov
Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III
434-296-7063
JHW@ca4.uscourts.gov
Judge Paul V. Niemeyer
410-962-4210
PVN@ca4.uscourts.gov
Judge Diana Gribbon Motz
410-962-3606
DGM@ca4.uscourts.gov
Judge William B. Traxler, Jr.
804-916-2700
WBT@ca4.uscourts.gov
Judge Robert B. King
304-347-3533
RBK@ca4.uscourts.gov
Judge G. Steven Agee
804-916-2700
GSA@ca4.uscourts.gov
Judge Barbara Milano Keenan
804-916-2700
BMK@ca4.uscourts.gov
Judge James A. Wynn, Jr.
804-916-2700
JAW@ca4.uscourts.gov
Judge Albert Diaz
704-333-8025
albert_diaz@ca4.uscourts.gov
Judge Henry F. Floyd
864-591-5300
henry_floyd@ca4.uscourts.gov
Judge Stephanie D. Thacker
304-347-3516
SDT@ca4.uscourts.gov
Judge Pamela A. Harris
804-916-2700
PAH@ca4.uscourts.gov
Judge Julius N. Richardson
804-916-2700
JNR@ca4.uscourts.gov
Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum, Jr.
864-241-2190
marvin_quattlebaum@ca4.uscourts.gov
Senior Judge Dennis W. Shedd
803-732-8250
dennis_shedd@ca4.uscourts.gov
Judge Allison Jones Rushing
804-916-2700
AJR@ca4.uscourts.gov
History
CAIR sued the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on April 5, 2016 on behalf of 23 Muslims. The lawsuit challenged the validity of the Terror Screening Database (TSDB), the official name for the terror watchlist that is used by law enforcement and the private sector to protect millions of Americans and the citizens of several other countries from terrorism. Florida Family Association sent out several email alerts over a period of 2 years that asked people to send emails to urge Judge Trenga to make public safety the priority and not abolish the entire Terror Screening Database. Hopefully, the thousands of emails to Judge Trenga encouraged him along the way.
US District Judge Anthony Trenga issued a ruling on December 27, 2019 that VALIDATED the Department of Homeland Security Terror Screening Database (TSDB) and did NOT extend his September 4, 2019 order to give relief to unnamed plaintiffs including more than a million non-Americans on the list. Read Florida Family Association’s full report. Therefore, the DHS Terror Watchlist was still active and being used by thousands of government and business officials throughout the world.
While the judge did not rule the entire list unconstitutional he did order DHS to refine its procedures to comply with his standard of “due process” for adding and removing names to the TSDB. The judge “ORDERED that Defendants submit to the Court the information and revised procedures identified in its Order dated December 27, 2019 [Doc. No. 3481 within ninety (90) days of the date of this Order, and to the extent the Defendants contend that this information and revised procedures should be placed, in whole or in part, under seal or submitted ex parte or in camera.” DHS had until March 26, 2020 to comply with his order.
DHS appealed Judge Trenga’s ruling and order to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Florida Family Association sent out several email alerts that encouraged people to send emails to the three justices on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit panel. The prepared emails sent to the three justices stated: “I respectfully urge you not to give terrorists an advantage at the expense of the safety of American lives by affirming specific rules or unprecedented relief that may not work and could help terrorists in Anas Elhady v. Charles Kable. Requiring Government procedures for seeking redress for an individual’s alleged placement on the Terror Screening Database that go beyond what is necessary to satisfy Due Process could result in incorrect watchlist placement and jeopardize public safety."
On March 30, 2021, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued its Order and Opinion which reversed the district court judge's ruling and granted the United States motion to dismiss.
Judge Wilkinson wrote the opinion, in which Judge Richardson and Judge Quattlebaum joined.
The following is the introduction to the Opinion written by Judge Wilkinson:
To protect against acts of terrorism, the government maintains the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB). One of the chief uses of the TSDB is to screen travelers in airports and at the border. The plaintiffs, twenty-three individuals who allege they are in the TSDB, object to the delays and inconveniences they have experienced in airports and at the border. They allege the TSDB program violates the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause by failing to include more procedural safeguards.
The term “national security” is too often bandied loosely and carelessly about, but this is no program of marginal consequence. It lies at the very heart of our country’s effort to identify those who would inflict upon the public irretrievable loss and irreparable mass harms. By bringing this across-the-board attack on a system vital to public safety—rather than more focused individual challenges to particular law enforcement actions—plaintiffs face a demanding legal standard. Procedural due process claims require showing that the government violated constitutionally protected liberty interests. Plaintiffs cannot meet that burden. The government has had authority to regulate travel and control the border since the beginning of the nation. Indeed, this authority is a core attribute of sovereignty. The delays and burdens experienced by plaintiffs at the border and in airports, although regrettable, do not mandate a complete overhaul of the TSDB.
Nor are plaintiffs’ alleged reputational injuries more persuasive. The government has not publicly disclosed their TSDB status, the inconveniences protested reflect no singular disapprobation, and plaintiffs have not demonstrated the loss of any legal rights due to their alleged TSDB inclusion.
The following is the conclusion of the opinion printed here in part:
Several factors make us doubt the merits of plaintiffs’ arguments under this framework.
First, the government’s interest is extraordinarily significant in this case.“[T]he Government’s interest in combating terrorism is an urgent objective of the highest order.”Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, 561 U.S. 1, 28 (2010). The government claims that the TSDB is at the core of its counterterrorism apparatus and that burdening it with more procedures would markedly increase the risk of terrorist incidents.
Second, the weight of the private interests at stake is comparatively weak. In Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507 (2004), the Supreme Court applied the Mathews v. Eldridge balancing test and held that procedural due process required the government to give limited hearings to indefinitely detained U.S. citizens who were accused of being enemy combatants in the war on terror. Id. at 538–39. In part, the Court expressed concern about the risk of erroneous determinations that individuals were enemy combatants, describing that risk as “unacceptably high.”
Third, we would not casually second-guess Congress’s specific judgment as to how much procedure was needed in this context. See Walters v. Nat’l Ass’n of Radiation Survivors, 473 U.S. 305, 319–20 (1985) (underscoring the “deference [courts] customarily must pay to the duly enacted and carefully considered decision of a coequal and representative branch of our Government” because “legislatures are to be allowed USCA4 Appeal: 20-1311 considerable leeway to formulate such processes without being forced to conform to a rigid constitutional code of procedural necessities”); see id.at 326.
History and precedent reveal that the government possesses latitude in regulating travel, guarding the nation’s borders, and protecting the aspirations of the populace for tranquility and safety. For “[u]nless a society has the capability and will to defend itself from the aggressions of others, constitutional protections of any sort have little meaning.” Wayte v. United States, 470 U.S. 598, 612 (1985). We have such imperfect comprehension of the consequences of our interventions as to raise the prospect here of doing far more harm than good. Given the nation’s need for unrelaxed vigilance against catastrophic threats, we can say with confidence only that the TSDB program matters and that it conforms to long-settled propositions of law. But saying that should be enough. Plaintiffs’ procedural due process claims fail for the reasons set forth above. We thus reverse the district court’s denial of the government’s motion for summary judgment and remand this case with instructions to enter judgment in favor of the government.
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