Martin v. U.S.:  Supreme Court rejects Eleventh Circuit’s approach to Federal Tort Claims Act

By Greg Mermelstein, Deputy Director & General Counsel, Missouri Public Defender

The “law enforcement proviso” in the Federal Tort Claims Act does not override the “discretionary-function exception” in the statute, the Supreme Court held June 12 in Martin v. United States.

The Court further held the Supremacy Clause does not provide a defense to the United States in FTCA suits.

Both rulings rejected the approach used by the Eleventh Circuit in FTCA cases.

Facts

           In October 2017, FBI SWAT agents mistakenly raided Curtrina Martin and Hilliard Cliatt’s home in suburban Atlanta.

Agents had a search and arrest warrant for a particular address, but went to the wrong house on the street.  The agents burst through the front door and used a flash-bang grenade.

Fearing a home invasion, the couple hid in a closet.  When the agents found them, they threw Cliatt to the floor, handcuffed him, and trained their gun on Martin after she fell down.

Another agent then found some mail in the house, and realized they were at the wrong address. 

Martin and Cliatt sued the United States under the FTCA, alleging negligent and intentional torts causing personal injury and property damage.

The district court granted summary judgment to the Government.

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed, using a unique FTCA approach no other circuit had adopted.

Holding

The Supreme Court reversed, in a unanimous opinion by Justice Gorsuch.

The FTCA waives sovereign immunity for certain torts committed by federal employees, subject to 13 exceptions listed in Sec. 2680.

Subsection (a) – the “discretionary function exception” — does not waive sovereign immunity for discretionary acts of federal employees.

Subsection (h) – the “intentional tort exception” — does not waive sovereign immunity for assault, battery, false arrest or imprisonment, abuse of process, or malicious prosecution “Provided, That, with regard to … law enforcement officers” this immunity is waived.

Most courts begin analysis of claims such as those raised by Martin by first examining the intentional-tort clause.  If a law enforcement officer committed one of the listed torts in subsection (h), a claim will survive due to the law enforcement proviso.

 Next, most courts turn to the discretionary function exception, which forbids claims involving an element of judgment or choice. 

If any of a plaintiff’s claims survive that review, most courts then turn to the question of whether the Government is liable on the merits, which ordinarily turns on whether a plaintiff can demonstrate the federal official committed a tort under applicable state law.

The Eleventh Circuit “proceeds quite differently” from the above approach, the Supreme Court said.

“Rather than asking whether the discretionary-function exception bars either the plaintiff’s negligent-tort claims or his intentional-tort claims, as most courts do, the Eleventh Circuit applies that exception only to the plaintiff’s negligence claims”, the Court said.  “The Eleventh Circuit does so because, in its view, the law enforcement proviso does not just override the intentional-tort exception, it also overrides all other exceptions in Sec. 2680, the discretionary-function exception included.”

“Under that approach, any intentional-tort claim covered by the proviso automatically proceeds to the merits – no matter what any other exception has to say”, the Court said.

But to “compensate” for this “plaintiff-friendly” reading of the proviso, the Eleventh Circuit takes a “defendant-friendly” view at the liability stage, the Court said. 

There, the Eleventh Circuit allows the Government to assert an affirmative defense under the constitution’s Supremacy Clause.  Under that approach, a plaintiff’s claim will be defeated whenever the claim bears “some nexus” to further “federal policy” or “federal law”.

Two cert. questions arise from the Eleventh Circuit’s approach, the Court said.  First, does the law enforcement proviso override not just the intentional-tort exception but also the discretionary-function exception?  Second, whether the Supremacy Clause provides a defense to the United States in FTCA suits?

The Court answered “no” to both.

Regarding the first question, the law-enforcement proviso “appears in the same subsection (and the same sentence) as the intentional-tort exception”, the Court said.  “Given that arrangement, an ordinary reader would naturally presume that the proviso modifies only subsection (h).”

           “Subsection (h)’s intentional-tort exception excludes from the FTCA’s sovereign-immunity waiver claims for torts like ‘assault, battery, false imprisonment, [and] false arrest’”, the Court said.  “The proviso then undoes that assertion of sovereign immunity for some of those same torts when committed by ‘investigative or law enforcement officers’.” 

           But “the proviso does not so much as mention the issues addressed by Section 2680’s other exceptions” like claims for “lost mail” or “combat injuries”, the Court said.  This indicates the proviso “refers only to the provision to which it is attached.”

           Regarding the second question, the “FTCA does not permit the Eleventh Circuit’s Supremacy Clause defense,” the Court said.

           “The FTCA is the ‘supreme’ federal law addressing the United States’ liability for torts committed by its agents”, the Court said.  It generally allows a plaintiff to prevail by demonstrating that “the State in which the alleged misconduct occurred would permit a cause of action for that misconduct.”

           “Because the FTCA’s liability rule incorporates state law, in most cases there is no conflict for the Supremacy Clause to resolve”, the Court said.  Here, for example, “Georgia law would permit a homeowner to sue a private person for damages if that person intentionally or negligently raided his house and assaulted him.”

           “So when the FTCA … instructs courts to apply those same state rules to decide whether the United States is liable to the plaintiffs, there is no discord between the two”, the Court said.

           “[F]ederal law will control other FTCA suits where ‘a litigant [can] point specifically to a constitutional test or a federal statute’ that supplies controlling liability rules, displacing contrary state law”, the Court said.  “In this case, however, the Eleventh Circuit did not identify any federal statute or constitional provision displacing Georgia tort law.”

           Applying the above analysis, the Court held that “plaintiffs’ intentional-tort claims survive their encounter with subsection (h) thanks to the law enforcement proviso,” but the Eleventh Circuit on remand must “consider whether subsection (a)’s discretionary-function exception bars either the plaintiffs’ negligent or intentional-tort claims.”

           The Court declined plaintiffs’ request to address “whether and under what circumstances the discretionary-function exception bars suits for wrong-house raids and similar misconduct.”

           Plaintiffs argued the Eleventh Circuit will take “too broad” a view of the discretionary-function exception because that court has previously suggested the exception bars all claims “unless a source of federal law ‘specifically prescribes’ a course of conduct” so as to deprive an official of all discretion.

           “We readily acknowledge that different lower courts have taken different views of the discretionary-function exception”, the Court said.  “But those questions lie well beyond the two we granted certiorari to address.”

Concurring opinion

           Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justice Jackson, concurred in the opinion “in full.”

           Sotomayor wrote separately, however, to “underscore” that “there is reason to think the discretionary-function exception may not apply” to bar Martin’s claims.

           Sotomayor said “it is hard to see” how the agents’ conduct in this case in failing “to check the street sign or house number on the mailbox before breaking down Martin’s door and terrorizing the home’s occupants involved the kind of policy judgments that the discretionary-function exception was designed to protect.”

           Sotomayor also noted that Congress added the law enforcement proviso to the FTCA in 1973 after federal officers wrongly raided a home in Illinois – an event that drew national attention and was very similar to the wrong-house raid in this case.

           “[A]ny interpretation” of the discretionary-function exception “should allow for liability in the very cases Congress amended the FTCA to remedy”, Sotomayor said.