Supreme Court Takes FBI’s Fight Against No Fly List Lawsuit

The US Supreme Court will hear a bid from the FBI to avoid litigation brought by an Oregon man who was placed on the No Fly List but later removed.

The FBI argues Yonas Fikre’s claims are now moot because the federal government took him off the list seven years ago and submitted a sworn declaration stating he wouldn’t be placed back on it in the future based on current information.

Fikre alleged in a 2015 suit that the FBI harmed his reputation and violated his substantive and procedural due process rights to travel. The FBI’s No Fly List prohibits suspected terrorists from flying within, to, from, and over the US.

Fikre said he learned he was on the list in 2010 while traveling to Sudan after FBI agents approached him, asked about his association with a particular mosque in Portland, and offered to remove him from the list if he became a government informant.

Twice, the district court dismissed his case and the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed the ruling. It said the FBI’s sworn declaration doesn’t assure Fikre that he won’t be banned from flying for the same reasons that prompted the government to add him to the list in the first place.

The FBI has asked the Supreme Court to reverse that decision and rule Fikre’s claims are now moot.

The case is Federal Bureau of Investigation v. Yonas Fikre, U.S., No. 22-1178, 9/29/23.