Appeals Court Rejects Obama Administration's State Secrets Claim in Extraordinary Rendition Case

In February, civil libertarians were shocked when the The Obama Administration argued the same position as the Bush Administration in the case of Mohamed et al v. Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. The five men who brought the suit claim to have been victims of extraordinary rendition. At the time, Bush administration attorneys managed to get the case was thrown out, claiming national security concerns.

Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit unanimously rejected the Obama administration's claim of national security. The ruling stipulated that the federal government could not assert a "state secrets privilege" to throw out entire civil cases before the discovery phase begins. The court ruled that the administration could attempt to rule out certain evidence for national security reasons, but not an entire case.

Why would the Obama administration move to protect the Bush administration? For one thing, being able to throw out entire cases based on the claim of national security is a big expansion of executive power that perhaps some in the administration would be reluctant to give back. Luckily, the courts took it back. Another reason for the claim is that the administration's lawyers, like most lawyers, are trying to win their cases. If the claim worked for the previous administration, the defendants in the case would probably insist that the Obama administration at least attempt the same move that worked before.

This is not the only case where the Obama administration has used the "state secrets" argument. ABC's Jake Tapper writes:

[A]mong them [are] Jewel v. NSA, where the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is challenging the NSA surveillance by suing on behalf of AT&T customers whose records may or may not have been caught up in the NSA 'dragnet'(read more on that HERE); and Al-Haramain v. Obama, in which the leaders of a now-defunct Islamic charity, allege that the National Security Agency under President Bush engaged in illegal warrantless wiretapping (more on that HERE.)

Tapper reports that the administration has no comment yet on the court's decision.