Case: Center for Constitutional Rights v. Obama

On January 17, 2006, the Center for Constitutional Rights and five of its attorneys who represented clients suspected of involvement with terrorist organizations, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against the National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Homeland Security, and Federal Bureau of Investigation. The plaintiffs originally sought an injunction that would prohibit the government from conducting warrantless surveillance of communications in the U.S, claiming that such surveillance violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ("FISA"), the Separation of Powers doctrine, and the First and Fourth Amendments. Plaintiffs based these allegations primarily upon statements by President George W. Bush and other government officials in December 2005 admitting that the NSA had monitored, without a warrant, communications between the U.S. and a foreign country where one of the parties was believed to be a member or affiliate of al-Qa'ida. FISA explicitly authorized electronic surveillance for the purposes of collecting foreign intelligence only upon orders issued by federal judges on a special court.

By January 2007, the government claimed to have shut down the surveillance program, having received approval from a FISA Court judge to carry out the same surveillance pursuant to court order. (On re-application, it seems that another FISA Court judge disagreed; the threatened end of the program led to the enactment first of the Protect America Act and then the FISA Amendments Act, in 2007 and 2008, respectively; these allowed the surveillance in question.) There remained, however, one final set of claims not affected by the end of the non-FISA surveillance program: the plaintiffs asked the Court to order the government to destroy any records of surveillance of the plaintiffs. The government argued that the plaintiffs lacked standing because they lacked evidence that they had actually been surveilled.

In late 2006, the Multi District Litigation (MDL) Panel transferred the case to the Northern District of California to be consolidated with the Multi District Litigation. On February 23, 2007, the Panel consolidated the case with the MDL, In Re National Security Agency Telecommunications Records Litigation. For information about what happened while the case was a part of the consolidation see Hepting v. AT&T.

Ultimately, on January 31, 2011, the District Court (Judge Vaughn R. Walker) granted summary judgment in favor of the government. The Court held that the plaintiffs had failed to establish standing for any of their claims. The plaintiffs appealed.

On June 12, 2013, Judge McKeown wrote for the Ninth Circuit and affirmed the district court's dismissal. In re Nat'l Sec. Agency Telecommunications Records Litig., 522 F. App'x 383 (9th Cir. 2013). The Court of Appeals relied on the Supreme Court's decision in Clapper v. Amnesty International, (133 S. Ct. 1138 (2013)). On November 1, 2013, The Ninth Circuit denied rehearing, and on March 19, 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari review. The case is therefore done.