Oregon US District Judge Garr King has ruled that a lawsuit by an Oregon-based Islamic charity, the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, against the federal government for its domestic spying program may proceed. In the opinion and order linked below, Judge King denied the government's motion to dismiss the case or for summary judgement (though he did rule that the government could withhold certain evidence the plaintiffs and the Portland
Oregonian had been seeking).
http://newsroom.blogs.oregonlive.com/...
One noteworthy thing about this case is that -- although much of the caselaw in the opinion is severely deferential to the Executive -- it confirms of Judge Anna Diggs Taylor's ruling in Michigan that the government has hoisted itself on its own petard by disclosing what information it has about the domestic spying program. Judge King's ruling turns on the government's attempt to invoke the state secrets privilege. He stresses that the broad outlines of the program are not secret, which is one half of the reasoning undermining the government's claim. The take-home point here, of course, is that the government only disclosed what it did in response to its critics. We should all pat ourselves on the back for forcing these defensive disclosures, which might be fatal to the program in the end.
Judge King then actually rules for the government on several points here (denying a request to produce documents showing whether this particular charity was a target of the program), but what saves the plaintiffs' case is a classified document that had been inadvertently disclosed to them in the past. Although they are not permitted to retain the document itself, they may use their memories of its contents to file affidavits attesting to facts that would support a claim they had been spied on themselves. Thus, the lawsuit may proceed.