A unanimous Supreme Court said a family whose house was wrongly raided by law enforcement can sue.
At issue is what law enforcement refers to as "wrong-house raids." Local, state, or, as in the case before the court, federal officers smash into a private home to find a suspect, but it's the wrong house. That's what happened to Trina Martin, her 7-year-old son Gabe, and Trina's partner, Toi Cliatt, in their Atlanta home in 2017 when they their house was wrongly raided by FBI and SWAT agents who were serving an arrest warrant for a neighbor accused of gang activity.
In 2019 the family sued the FBI and individual agents for the wrong-house raid. It's never easy to bring such cases in state court, and it is even harder in federal court. That's because the federal government is generally immune from being sued, except in certain circumstances set out by Congress. The question for the Supreme Court was whether this wrong-house raid falls within those circumstances.
This story will be updated.
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