High Court Takes Up Appeal on FBI Immunity in Wrong-House Raid

The US Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a challenge to a grant of tort immunity to FBI agents who raided the wrong Atlanta home.

The family subjected to the erroneous raid argued that the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit improperly found the agents had sovereign immunity from the family’s negligence and similar tort claims.

The family—Curtrina Martin, her minor child, and Hilliard Toi Cliatt—also argued the Eleventh Circuit wrongly held that the US Constitution’s Supremacy Clause barred the family’s assault and battery claims against the agent, Lawrence Guerra, and the team Guerra led.

The Federal Tort Claims Act allows private citizens to sue government actors for wrong house raids, Martin and the other house occupants argued in their petition for high court review. During the raid, the agents deployed a flashbang, held the family at gunpoint, and dragged one family member out of a closet, the family said.

The Supreme Court has said the FTCA “‘ensures that innocent individuals who are subjected to raids will have a cause of action against the Federal Government,’” the family’s petition said, citing a 1980 high court decision. “Petitioners are innocent individuals who were subjected to a federal wrong-house raid. Yet the opinion below holds that the FTCA provides them no cause of action against the government.”

The government asked the Supreme Court not to grant the petition for review.

The Eleventh Circuit properly found that Guerra was immune from the negligence claim, the government’s brief said. The FTCA, while waiving sovereign immunity in some cases, grants it to government actors who were, as here, performing a discretionary function influenced by policy decisions, the government argued.

Guerra, who said his GPS system directed him to the wrong house, had discretion and engaged in policy considerations about how to prep and execute the raid.

The Justice Department argued that the Eleventh Circuit needn’t have invoked the Supremacy Clause to bar the assault and battery claims because the “discretionary exception” applied. Either way, “the court of appeals’ premise is sound,” prosecutors said. “Any error is irrelevant to the proper disposition of this case.”

The Eleventh Circuit in 2024 said Guerra is entitled to immunity on the negligence claim under Supreme Court and circuit precedent under the discretionary function exception. The doctrine grants immunity where, as here, a government official acted within his judgment during the course of his work, the court said.

The decision on how to locate the subject of an arrest warrant prior to execution of the warrant falls squarely within exception, the Eleventh Circuit said.

And under Eleventh Circuit precedent, the government can invoke the Supremacy Clause—requiring federal law to trump state law—against state-tort liability if it demonstrates that the government acts have some nexus to furthering federal policy, the Eleventh Circuit said. Because Guerra’s acts here were in furtherance of federal policy, the family’s state-law battery and assault claims must be tossed, the Eleventh Circuit said.

Lisa C. Lambert, of Atlanta, and Institute for Justice represent the family.

The case is Martin vs. United States, U.S., No. 24-362, 1/27/25.