Supreme Court Revives Suit Over Wrongly Raided Home (2)

The US Supreme Court revived a Georgia family’s suit against the federal government after the FBI mistakenly raided their home.

In a unanimous ruling on Thursday by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the court said the Federal Tort Claims Act may have waived the federal government’s sovereign immunity. The act waives the government’s immunity in cases that would generally be barred.

In doing so, the court undid what it called the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit’s “outlier” approach to whether these kinds of cases can go forward. But it left several questions unresolved.

“It is work enough for the day to answer the questions we took this case to resolve, clear away the two faulty assumptions on which that court has relied in the past, and redirect it to the proper inquiry,” Gorsuch wrote.

The high court victory means that Curtrina Martin, her partner Hilliard Toi Cliatt, and her son, then 7, get their day in court. They still have to prove that the government is liable.

The FBI raided Martin’s suburban Atlanta home in the predawn hours of Oct. 18, 2017. A SWAT team broke down the door, detonated a flash-bang grenade, and held the family at gunpoint.

Officers later realized that they’d raided the wrong home. During a second raid on the correct home about a block away, they arrested the intended target.

Martin and her family were reimbursed for the damage to their home but sued the FBI for emotional distress and other claims. The Eleventh Circuit dismissed their case, finding that their claims were barred.

The case is Martin v. United States, U.S., No. 24-362, 6/12/25.