Government seeks fast track on spying appeal
on Aug 1, 2006 at 2:44 pm
Impact of Supreme Court rulings on later cases — a continuing series.
Precedents at issue: U.S. v. Reynolds (1953) and Totten v. U.S. (1875) on the “state secrets privilege.”
A rapidly moving test case on the constitutionality of the federal government’s “terrorist surveillance program” moved up the court ladder this week, as the Justice Department asked the Ninth Circuit Court to allow an immediate appeal, with expedited review, of its claim of the “state secrets privilege” to shut down that and other cases. The petition for “interlocutory appeal” filed Monday can be found here.
That appeal (and a similar one filed by AT&T Corporation, another target of the challenge) seeks the overruling of a July 20 decision by Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker of San Francisco.allowing the case of Hepting v. AT&T Corporation to move toward at least some pre-trial evidence-gathering. Judge Walker rejected the government’s plea to dismiss that case outright based on the “state secrets privilege.” (A post on Judge Walker’s ruling, with a link to it, can be found here. It is docket 06-672 in the District Court.)
In its request for permission to appeal promptly, the Justice Departrment argued that Judge Walker engaged in “a usurpation of the proper role of the Executive in the field of protection of information that is key to national defense.”
Meanwhile, attorneys for the government, for AT&T and for the individuals and groups that challenged the spying program because of its alleged reach to some domestic telephone calls and e-mail traffic are jousting before Judge Walker on whether he should stop all proceedings in the case until after the Circuit Court acts on the new appeals.
