The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously revived a suit from a couple whose home was mistakenly raided by the F.B.I., giving them a fresh opportunity to try to persuade lower courts that they should be able to sue the federal government for the harm they suffered.
The case, Martin v. United States, No. 24-362, arose from a raid very early on a fall morning in 2017, when F.B.I. agents used a battering ram to knock down the front door of the home of the couple, Hilliard Toi Cliatt and Curtrina Martin. Guns drawn, the agents set off a flash-bang grenade and charged inside.
The couple barricaded themselves in a closet. The agents dragged Mr. Cliatt out at gunpoint and handcuffed him. They told Ms. Martin to keep her hands up as she pleaded to see her 7-year-old son, who had been asleep in another room.
As they questioned Mr. Cliatt, he gave his address. It was different from the one the agents had a warrant to enter.
One of the agents, Lawrence Guerra, had earlier identified the correct house, which he said looked similar and was nearby, on a different street. But on the morning of the raid, he said he went to the wrong house because he had been misdirected by his GPS device.
The couple sued for false arrest, false imprisonment, assault, battery and other claims but lost in the lower courts on a variety of grounds, notably that government officials’ actions are protected from lawsuits when they perform a duty that involves discretion.
The case turned on the Federal Tort Claims Act, which sometimes allows suits against the government notwithstanding the doctrine of sovereign immunity. A 1974 amendment to the law made it easier to sue over wrong-house raids after notorious ones in Collinsville, Ill. But the law is subject to a tangled series of exceptions and provisos.
Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court and writes Sidebar, a column on legal developments. A graduate of Yale Law School, he practiced law for 14 years before joining The Times in 2002.
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