(Courthouse News) A Ninth Circuit panel resurrected a class action Thursday challenging the use of an FBI informant to infiltrate several Los Angeles and Orange County mosques and secretly collect information on Muslims for more than a year.
In its long-awaited ruling, the panel said the trial court should not have dismissed the Muslims’ constitutional claims outright to protect state secrets, and should have instead privately reviewed the evidence to determine whether the surveillance was unlawful.
“The Ninth Circuit’s decision is a victory for everyone who believes in the rule of law,” senior counsel Ahilan Arulanantham with the ACLU’s Southern California chapter said in a statement Thursday. “It rejects the government’s request that the courts close their eyes to this shameful chapter of FBI surveillance of Muslims because it was a ‘state secret.’ Most important, it creates the possibility of justice for our clients and others who were targeted just because of their religion. We look forward to holding the government accountable before the district court.”
