Source: http://news.lawreader.com/?p=2662
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 12:23:57+00:00

Document:
Javaid Iqbal, a cable television installer on Long Island, was among thousands of Muslim men rounded up after the Sept. 11 attacks. He later filed suit against John Ashcroft, the former United States attorney general, and Robert S. Mueller III, the head of the F.B.I., charging that they were responsible for policies that resulted in the abuse that he suffered in a Brooklyn detention center. His suit was rejected by the Supreme Court on May 18, 2009.
Mr. Iqbal, like others of the Muslim men rounded up, was considered to be “of high interest.” Such suspects were held in a special housing unit of the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
Mr. Iqbal said he was kept in solitary confinement at the center, denied medical care and subjected to daily body-cavity searches, beatings and extreme temperatures. He said that he was called a terrorist and a “Muslim killer,” and that he lost 40 pounds during six months in the special unit.
He eventually pleaded guilty to identity fraud and was deported to Pakistan.
Mr. Iqbal sued more than 30 officials for mistreatment based on his religion and national background. The Supreme Court decision, Ashcroft v. Iqbal, No. 07-1015, concerned only Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Mueller.
Writing for a 5-4 majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that the lawsuit filed by Mr. Iqbal must be dismissed at a preliminary stage because he failed to allege a plausible link between the officials’ conduct and the abuses he said he had suffered.
Mr. Iqbal, Justice Kennedy wrote, failed to describe adequately how the actions of the two officials were connected to the mistreatment and discrimination he said he had suffered. Justice David H. Souter, writing for the dissenters, said the allegations against the two officials in Mr. Iqbal’s lawsuit were specific enough to satisfy the requirements for initiating a lawsuit.
Justice Souter added that the majority had engaged in a sort of legal sleight of hand, ignoring a concession from the government that Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Mueller would be liable were Mr. Iqbal able to prove they actually knew of unconstitutional discrimination by their subordinates and were deliberately indifferent to it.
Instead of accepting that concession, Justice Souter continued, the majority decided that even proof of such knowledge was insufficient.
Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, respondent Iqbal, a Pakistani Muslim, was arrested on criminal charges and detained by federal officials under restrictive conditions. Iqbal filed a Bivens action against numerous federal officials, including petitioner Ashcroft, the former Attorney General, and petitioner Mueller, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). See Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U. S. 388 . The complaint alleged, inter alia, that petitioners designated Iqbal a person “of high interest” on account of his race, religion, or national origin, in contravention of the First and Fifth Amendment s; that the FBI, under Mueller’s direction, arrested and detained thousands of Arab Muslim men as part of its September-11th investigation; that petitioners knew of, condoned, and willfully and maliciously agreed to subject Iqbal to harsh conditions of confinement as a matter of policy, solely on account of the prohibited factors and for no legitimate penological interest; and that Ashcroft was the policy’s “principal architect” and Mueller was “instrumental” in its adoption and execution. After the District Court denied petitioners’ motion to dismiss on qualified-immunity grounds, they invoked the collateral order doctrine to file an interlocutory appeal in the Second Circuit. Affirming, that court assumed without discussion that it had jurisdiction and focused on the standard set forth in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U. S. 544 , for evaluating whether a complaint is sufficient to survive a motion to dismiss. Concluding that Twombly’s “flexible plausibility standard” obliging a pleader to amplify a claim with factual allegations where necessary to render it plausible was inapplicable in the context of petitioners’ appeal, the court held that Iqbal’s complaint was adequate to allege petitioners’ personal involvement in discriminatory decisions which, if true, violated clearly established constitutional law.
(a) Denial of a qualified-immunity claim can fall within the narrow class of prejudgment orders reviewable under the collateral-order doctrine so long as the order “turns on an issue of law.” Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U. S. 511 . The doctrine’s applicability in this context is well established; an order rejecting qualified immunity at the motion-to-dismiss stage is a “final decision” under 28 U. S. C. §1291, which vests courts of appeals with “jurisdiction of appeals from all final decisions of the district courts.” Behrens v. Pelletier, 516 U. S. 299 . Pp. 7–8.
(a) This Court assumes, without deciding, that Iqbal’s First Amendment claim is actionable in a Bivens action, see Hartman v. Moore, 547 U. S. 250 , n. 2. Because vicarious liability is inapplicable to Bivens and §1983 suits, see, e.g., Monell v. New York City Dept. of Social Servs., 436 U. S. 658 , the plaintiff in a suit such as the present one must plead that each Government-official defendant, through his own individual actions, has violated the Constitution. Purposeful discrimination requires more than “intent as volition or intent as awareness of consequences”; it involves a decisionmaker’s undertaking a course of action “ ‘because of,’ not merely ‘in spite of,’ [the action’s] adverse effects upon an identifiable group.” Personnel Administrator of Mass. v. Feeney, 442 U. S. 256 . Iqbal must plead sufficient factual matter to show that petitioners adopted and implemented the detention policies at issue not for a neutral, investigative reason, but for the purpose of discriminating on account of race, religion, or national origin. Pp. 11–13.

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