Opinion ID: 4549553
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Recordings of Conversations to Which Monteilh

Text: Was a Party A reasonable expectation of privacy exists where “a person ha[s] exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy,” and “the expectation [is] one that society is prepared to recognize as ‘reasonable.’” Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 361 (1967) (Harlan, J., concurring); see, e.g., California v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207, 211) (1986) (describing Justice Harlan’s test as the “touchstone of Fourth Amendment analysis”). Generally, an individual “has no privacy interest in that which he voluntarily reveals to a government agent,” a principle known as the invited informer doctrine. United States v. Wahchumwah, 710 F.3d 862, 867 (9th Cir. 2013) (citing Hoffa v. United States, 385 U.S. 293, 300–02 (1966)); see also United States v. Aguilar, 883 F.2d 662, 697–98 (9th Cir. 1989), superseded on other grounds by statute, Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, Pub. L. No. 99-603, 100 Stat. 3359, as recognized in United States v. Gonzalez-Torres, 309 F.3d 594 (9th Cir. 2002). Plaintiffs contend, however, that the invited informer doctrine does not apply to the recordings made by Monteilh of conversations to which he was a party because the surveillance was conducted with discriminatory purpose and therefore in bad faith. Bad faith of this sort does not, however, implicate the reasonable privacy expectation protected by the Fourth Amendment or violate the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. There is, to be sure, an important “limitation[] on the government’s use of undercover informers to infiltrate an organization engaging in protected first amendment 36 FAZAGA V. WALLS activities”: the government’s investigation must not be conducted “for the purpose of abridging first amendment freedoms.” Aguilar, 883 F.2d at 705. But that limitation on voluntary conversations with undercover informants— sometimes referred to as a “good faith” requirement,11 e.g., United States v. Mayer, 503 F.3d 740, 751 (9th Cir. 2007); Aguilar, 883 F.2d at 705—is imposed by the First Amendment, not the Fourth Amendment. As that constitutional limitation is not grounded in privacy expectations, it does not affect the warrant requirement under the Fourth Amendment. Under the appropriate Fourth Amendment precepts, “[u]ndercover operations, in which the agent is a so-called ‘invited informer,’ are not ‘searches’ under the Fourth Amendment.” Mayer, 503 F.3d at 750 (emphasis added) (quoting Aguilar, 883 F.2d at 701). “[A] defendant generally has no privacy interest”—not merely an unreasonable privacy interest—“in that which he voluntarily reveals to a government agent.” Wahchumwah, 710 F.3d at 867 (emphasis added). In other words, use of a government informant under the invited informer doctrine—even if not in good faith in the First Amendment sense—does not implicate the privacy interests protected by the Fourth Amendment. Because our inquiry under FISA is confined to whether a reasonable expectation of privacy was violated and whether a warrant was therefore required, see ACLU, 493 F.3d at 657 n.16, 683, the First Amendment-grounded good-faith limitation does not apply to our current inquiry. 11 We use this term in the remainder of this discussion to refer to the constitutional limitation on the use of informants discussed in the text. FAZAGA V. WALLS 37 Under the invited informer doctrine, Plaintiffs lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy in the conversations recorded by Monteilh to which he was a party. The Agent Defendants are therefore not liable under FISA for this category of surveillance. B. Recordings of Conversations in the Mosque Prayer Hall to Which Monteilh Was Not a Party Plaintiffs did have a privacy-grounded reasonable expectation that their conversations in the mosque prayer hall would not be covertly recorded by an individual who was not present where Plaintiffs were physically located and was not known to be listening in.12 The Agent Defendants are, however, entitled to qualified immunity with respect to this category of surveillance under the second prong of the qualified immunity standard—whether “the right was ‘clearly established’ at the time of the challenged conduct.” al-Kidd, 563 U.S. at 735 (quoting Harlow, 457 U.S. at 818). Again, the relevant questions here on the merits of the FISA and Fourth Amendment issues are whether “a person ha[s] exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy,” and whether “the expectation [is] one that society is prepared to recognize as ‘reasonable.’” Katz, 389 U.S. at 361 (Harlan, J., concurring). To first determine whether an individual has “exhibited an actual expectation of privacy,” we assess whether “he [sought] to preserve [something] as private.” Bond v. United States, 529 U.S. 334, 338 (2000) (alterations 12 We are not suggesting that the recording would have been impermissible under FISA and the Fourth Amendment if the Agent Defendants had obtained a warrant based on probable cause. Here, however, no warrant was obtained. 38 FAZAGA V. WALLS in original) (quoting Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 740 (1979)). Based on the rules and customs of the mosque, and the allegations in the complaint, we have no trouble determining that Plaintiffs manifested an actual, subjective expectation of privacy in their conversations there. The mosque prayer hall is not an ordinary public place. It is a site of religious worship, a place for Muslims to come together for prayer, learning, and fellowship. Plaintiffs allege that the prayer hall “is [a] sacred space where particular rules and expectations apply. Shoes are prohibited, one must be in a state of ablution, discussing worldly matters is discouraged, and the moral standards and codes of conduct are at their strongest.” Notably, “[g]ossiping, eavesdropping, or talebearing (namima—revealing anything where disclosure is resented) is forbidden.” And ICOI, which Malik and AbdelRahim attended, specifically prohibited audio and video recording in the mosque without permission. When, on a rare occasion, an outside entity did record an event or a speaker, ICOI put up signs to notify congregants. Furthermore, Plaintiffs explain in their complaint that halaqas, which are small group meetings during which participants “discuss theology or matters related to the practice of Islam,” are understood by mosque attendees to be environments that “ensure some measure of confidentiality among participants.”13 These privacy-oriented rules and customs confirm for us that Plaintiffs held a subjective expectation of privacy in their conversations among themselves while in the prayer hall. 13 We understand that description to imply that Monteilh recorded conversations that occurred during halaqas in the mosque prayer hall. FAZAGA V. WALLS 39 That Plaintiffs were not alone in the mosque prayer hall does not defeat their claim that they manifested an expectation of privacy.14 “Privacy does not require solitude.” United States v. Taketa, 923 F.2d 665, 673 (9th Cir. 1991). For example, “a person can have a subjective expectation that his or her home will not be searched by the authorities, even if he or she has invited friends into his or her home.” Trujillo v. City of Ontario, 428 F. Supp. 2d 1094, 1102 (C.D. Cal. 2006), aff’d sub nom. Bernhard v. City of Ontario, 270 F. App’x 518 (9th Cir. 2008). The same principle applies to certain other enclosed locations in which individuals have particular reason to expect confidentiality and repose. 15 14 The Agent Defendants cite Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. at 740–41, to support the proposition that the unattended recordings in the mosque prayer hall did not invade Plaintiffs’ reasonable expectation of privacy. Smith and its progeny do not apply here. Smith concerned a pen register installed and used by a telephone company, and held that an individual enjoys no Fourth Amendment protection “in information he voluntary turns over to third parties.” Id. at 743–44. But, as the Fourth Circuit has stressed, Smith and the cases relying on it are concerned with “whether the government invades an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy when it obtains, from a third party, the third party’s records.” United States v. Graham, 824 F.3d 421, 426 (4th Cir. 2016) (en banc) (emphasis added), abrogated on other grounds by Carpenter v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 2206 (2018). Cases “involv[ing] direct government surveillance activity,” including surreptitiously viewing, listening to, or recording individuals—like the one before us—present a wholly separate question. Id. 15 Taketa, for example, held that a state employee could hold an expectation of privacy in his office even though the office was shared with two others. 923 F.2d at 673. “[E]ven ‘private’ business offices are often subject to the legitimate visits of coworkers, supervisors, and the public, without defeating the expectation of privacy unless the office is ‘so open to fellow employees or the public that no expectation of privacy is reasonable.’” Id. (quoting O’Connor v. Ortega, 480 U.S. 709, 717–18 (1987)). 40 FAZAGA V. WALLS Finally, the case law distinguishes between an expectation of privacy in a place and an expectation of privacy as to whether an individual’s conversations or actions in that place would be covertly recorded by persons not themselves present in that place.16 The Supreme Court has recently emphasized the significant difference between obtaining information in person and recording information electronically. See Carpenter, 138 S. Ct. at 2219 (“Unlike the nosy neighbor who keeps an eye on comings and goings, they are ever alert, and their memory is nearly infallible.”). Here, given the intimate and religious nature of the space and the express prohibition on recording, Plaintiffs have adequately alleged that they subjectively believed their conversations would not be covertly recorded by someone not present in the prayer hall for transmission to people not present in the prayer hall.17 Having concluded that Plaintiffs exhibited a subjective expectation of privacy, we now consider whether it was “one that society is prepared to recognize as ‘reasonable.’” Katz, 389 U.S. at 361 (Harlan, J., concurring). In assessing whether 16 See also Taketa, 923 F.2d at 676 (“Taketa has no general privacy interest in [his co-worker’s] office, but he may have an expectation of privacy against being videotaped in it.”); Trujillo, 428 F. Supp. 2d at 1102 (considering the secret installation and use of a video camera in a police department’s men’s locker room, and explaining that it was “immaterial” that the plaintiffs changed their clothes in the presence of others, because “[a] person can have a subjective expectation of privacy that he or she will not be covertly recorded, even though he or she knows there are other people in the locker room” (emphasis added)). 17 The complaint alleges that Plaintiffs lost “confidence in the mosque as a sanctuary” after learning of Monteilh’s surveillance. This feeling of the loss of privacy reinforces the conclusion that Plaintiffs exhibited an actual expectation of privacy in their conversations in the mosque before the alleged surveillance took place. FAZAGA V. WALLS 41 an individual’s expectation of privacy is reasonable, context is key. See O’Connor, 480 U.S. at 715. “Although no single rubric definitively resolves which expectations of privacy are entitled to protection, the analysis is informed by historical understandings ‘of what was deemed an unreasonable search and seizure when [the Fourth Amendment] was adopted.’” Carpenter, 138 S. Ct. at 2213–14 (alteration in original) (footnote omitted) (quoting Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 149 (1925)). Relevant here is the principle that “the extent to which the Fourth Amendment protects people may depend upon where those people are.” Minnesota v. Carter, 525 U.S. 83, 88 (1998) (emphasis added). We thus “assess the nature of the location where [the] conversations were seized”—here, the mosque prayer hall. United States v. Gonzalez, Inc., 412 F.3d 1102, 1116–17 (9th Cir. 2005), amended on denial of reh’g, 437 F.3d 854 (9th Cir. 2006). The sacred and private nature of the houses of worship Plaintiffs attended distinguishes them from the types of commercial and public spaces in which courts have held that individuals lack a reasonable expectation of privacy.18 United States v. Gonzalez, 328 F.3d 543 (9th Cir. 2003), for example, held that the defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in “a large, quasi-public mailroom at a public hospital during ordinary business hours.” Id. at 547. The mailroom had open doors, was visible to the outside via large windows, and received heavy foot traffic. Id. In addition to focusing on the physical specifics of the mailroom, Gonzalez emphasized 18 See, e.g., In re John Doe Trader No. One, 894 F.2d 240, 243–44 (7th Cir. 1990) (holding that a rule prohibiting tape recorders on the trading floor “aimed at various forms of distracting behavior” and explicitly “designed to protect ‘propriety and decorum’ not privacy” did not support a reasonable expectation of privacy). 42 FAZAGA V. WALLS that public hospitals, “by their nature . . . create a diminished expectation of privacy. The use of surveillance cameras in hospitals for patient protection, for documentation of medical procedures and to prevent theft of prescription drugs is not uncommon.” Id. The mosque prayer halls in this case, by contrast, have no characteristics similarly evidencing diminished expectations of privacy or rendering such expectations unreasonable.19 There are no urgent health or safety needs justifying surveillance. And the use of surveillance equipment at ICOI is not only uncommon, but expressly forbidden. Our constitutional protection of religious observance supports finding a reasonable expectation of privacy in such a sacred space, where privacy concerns are acknowledged and protected, especially during worship and other religious observance. Cf. Mockaitis v. Harcleroad, 104 F.3d 1522, 19 Again, the fact that many people worshipped at the mosque does not render the Plaintiffs’ expectations of privacy in their conversations (or at the very least from, their expectations that their conversations would not be covertly recorded) unreasonable. In Gonzalez, Inc., for example, we held that individuals who owned and managed a small, family-run business with up to 25 employees had “a reasonable expectation of privacy over the on-site business conversations between their agents.” 412 F.3d at 1116–17. The Gonzalez family, whose phone calls were intercepted, were not alone in their place of business, and their calls could have been overheard by others who were present. But we concluded that they nonetheless had a reasonable expectation of privacy over their conversations because they owned the office, had full access to the building, and exercised managerial control over the office’s day-to-day operations. Id. Similarly, United States v. McIntyre, 582 F.2d 1221 (9th Cir. 1978), rejected the argument that a police officer lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy over conversations had in his office because his office door was open and a records clerk worked nearby in an adjacent room. Id. at 1224. “A business office need not be sealed to offer its occupant a reasonable degree of privacy,” we reasoned. Id. FAZAGA V. WALLS 43 1533 (9th Cir. 1997) (holding that, based in part on “the nation’s history of respect for religion in general,” a priest had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his conversation with an individual during confession), overruled on other grounds by City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507 (1997). Thus, Plaintiffs’ expectation that their conversations in the mosque prayer hall would be confidential among participants (unless shared by one of them with others), and so would not be intercepted by recording devices planted by absent government agents was objectively reasonable. Finally, “[w]here the materials sought to be seized may be protected by the First Amendment, the requirements of the Fourth Amendment must be applied with ‘scrupulous exactitude.’” Zurcher v. Stanford Daily, 436 U.S. 547, 564 (1978) (quoting Stanford v. Texas, 379 U.S. 476, 485 (1965)). “National security cases,” like the one here, “often reflect a convergence of First and Fourth Amendment values not present in cases of ‘ordinary’ crime.” United States v. U.S. District Court (Keith), 407 U.S. 297, 313 (1972). “Fourth Amendment protections become the more necessary when the targets of official surveillance may be those suspected of unorthodoxy . . . .” Id. at 314. Accordingly, we hold that Plaintiffs had a reasonable expectation of privacy that their conversations in the mosque prayer hall would not be covertly recorded by a government agent not party to the conversations. As of 2006 and 2007, however, no federal or state court decision had held that individuals generally have a reasonable expectation of privacy from surveillance in places of worship. Our court had declined to read Katz as established authority “for the proposition that a reasonable expectation of privacy 44 FAZAGA V. WALLS attaches to church worship services open to the public.” The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) v. United States, 870 F.2d 518, 527 (9th Cir. 1989). Noting that there was a lack of clearly established law so concluding, Presbyterian Church held that Immigration and Naturalization Service (“INS”) officials were entitled to qualified immunity from a Fourth Amendment challenge to undercover electronic surveillance of church services conducted without a warrant and without probable cause. Id. No case decided between Presbyterian Church and the incidents giving rise to this case decided otherwise. And no case decided during that period addressed circumstances more like those here, in which there are some specific manifestations of an expectation of privacy in the particular place of worship. Arguably pertinent was Mockaitis, but that case concerned the confession booth, not the church premises generally. 104 F.3d at 1533. The circumstances here fall between Presbyterian Church and Mockaitis, so there was no clearly established law here applicable. The Agent Defendants are thus entitled to qualified immunity as to this category of surveillance. C. Recordings Made by Planted Devices It was, of course, clearly established in 2006 and 2007 that individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy from covert recording of conversations in their homes, cars, and offices, and on their phones. See, e.g., Kyllo, 533 U.S. at 31 (home); New York v. Class, 475 U.S. 106, 115 (1986) (cars); Katz, 389 U.S. at 360–61 (Harlan, J., concurring) (enclosed telephone booths); Taketa, 923 F.2d at 673 (office); McIntyre, 582 F.2d at 1223–24 (office). The Agent Defendants accept these well-established legal propositions. But they maintain that the complaint’s allegations that the FBI planted electronic surveillance equipment in Fazaga’s FAZAGA V. WALLS 45 office and AbdelRahim’s house, car, and phone are too conclusory to satisfy Iqbal’s plausibility standard, and so do not adequately allege on the merits a violation of Plaintiffs’ rights under FISA. See al-Kidd, 563 U.S. at 735; Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678–79 (2009). We cannot agree. Plaintiffs offer sufficient well-pleaded facts to substantiate their allegation that some of the Agent Defendants—Allen and Armstrong—were responsible for planting devices in AbdelRahim’s house. Specifically, the complaint details one occasion on which Allen and Armstrong asked Monteilh about something that had happened in AbdelRahim’s house that Monteilh had not yet communicated to them, and explained that they knew about it because they had audio surveillance in the house. Plaintiffs also allege sufficient facts with regard to those two Agent Defendants in support of their allegation of electronic surveillance of Fazaga’s office in the OCIF mosque in Mission Viejo: Allen and Armstrong told Monteilh that electronic surveillance was “spread indiscriminately” across “at least eight area mosques including ICOI, and mosques in Tustin, Mission Viejo, Culver City, Lomita, West Covina, and Upland,” and that “they could get in a lot of trouble if people found out what surveillance they had in the mosques.” They also instructed Monteilh to use a video camera hidden in a shirt button to record the interior of OCIF and “get a sense of the schematics of the place—entrances, exits, rooms, bathrooms, locked doors, storage rooms, as well as security measures and whether any security guards were armed.”Armstrong later told Monteilh that he and Allen used the information he recorded to enter OCIF. 46 FAZAGA V. WALLS As to Tidwell, Walls, and Rose, however, the complaint does not plausibly allege their personal involvement with respect to the planted devices.20 The complaint details Tidwell, Walls, and Rose’s oversight of Monteilh, including that they read his daily notes and were apprised, through Allen and Armstrong, of the information he collected. But the complaint never alleges that Monteilh was involved in planting devices in AbdelRahim’s house, car, or phone, or in Fazaga’s office; those actions are attributed only to unnamed FBI agents. The complaint also offers general statements that Tidwell, Walls, and Rose supervised Allen and Armstrong.21 But “[g]overnment officials may not be held liable for the unconstitutional conduct of their subordinates under a theory of respondeat superior.” Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 676. Instead, “a plaintiff must plead that each Government-official defendant, through the official’s own individual actions, has violated the Constitution.” Id. Plaintiffs have not done so as to this category of surveillance with regard to Tidwell, Walls, and Rose. The complaint does not allege that the supervisors knew of, much less ordered or arranged for, the planting of 20 Because we concluded with respect to the first two categories of surveillance either that Plaintiffs had no reasonable expectation of privacy or that the expectation was not clearly established in the case law at the pertinent time, we reach the question whether Plaintiffs plausibly allege the personal involvement of Tidwell, Wall, and Rose only with respect to the third category of surveillance. 21 The relevant allegations were only that Walls and Rose “actively monitored, directed, and authorized the actions of Agents Allen and Armstrong and other agents at all times relevant in this action, for the purpose of surveilling Plaintiffs and other putative class members because they were Muslim” and that Tidwell “authorized and actively directed the actions of Agents Armstrong, Allen, Rose, Walls, and other agents.” FAZAGA V. WALLS 47 the recording devices in AbdelRahim’s home or Fazaga’s office, so the supervisors are entitled to qualified immunity as to that surveillance. See, e.g., Chavez v. United States, 683 F.3d 1102, 1110 (9th Cir. 2012); Ortez v. Washington County, 88 F.3d 804, 809 (9th Cir. 1996). In sum, Plaintiffs allege a FISA claim against Allen and Armstrong for recordings made by devices planted by FBI agents in AbdelRahim’s house and Fazaga’s office. As to all other categories of surveillance, the Agent Defendants either did not violate FISA; are entitled to qualified immunity on the FISA claim because Plaintiffs’ reasonable expectation of privacy was not clearly established; or were not plausibly alleged in the complaint to have committed any FISA violation that may have occurred. II. The State Secrets Privilege and FISA Preemption Having addressed the only claim to survive Defendants’ motions to dismiss in the district court, we turn to the district court’s dismissal of the remaining claims pursuant to the state secrets privilege.22 Plaintiffs argue that reversal is warranted “on either of two narrower grounds.” First, Plaintiffs argue that, at this preliminary stage, the district court erred in concluding that further litigation would require the disclosure of privileged information. Second, Plaintiffs maintain that the district court should have relied on FISA’s alternative procedures for handling sensitive national security information. Because we agree with Plaintiffs’ second 22 Plaintiffs do not dispute at this juncture the district court’s conclusion that the information over which the Attorney General asserted the state secrets privilege indeed comes within the privilege. We therefore assume as much for present purposes. 48 FAZAGA V. WALLS argument, we do not decide the first. We therefore need not review the Government’s state secrets claim to decide whether the standard for dismissal at this juncture—whether the district court properly “determine[d] with certainty . . . that litigation must be limited or cut off in order to protect state secrets, even before any discovery or evidentiary requests have been made,” Mohamed v. Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc., 614 F.3d 1070, 1081 (9th Cir. 2010) (en banc)—has been met. The initial question as to Plaintiffs’ second argument is whether the procedures established under FISA for adjudicating the legality of challenged electronic surveillance replace the common law state secrets privilege with respect to such surveillance to the extent that privilege allows the categorical dismissal of causes of action. The question is a fairly novel one. We are the first federal court of appeals to address it. Only two district courts, both in our circuit, have considered the issue. Those courts both held that FISA “displace[s] federal common law rules such as the state secrets privilege with regard to matters within FISA’s purview.” Jewel v. NSA, 965 F. Supp. 2d 1090, 1105–06 (N.D. Cal. 2013); accord In re NSA Telecomms. Records Litig. (In re NSA), 564 F. Supp. 2d 1109, 1117–24 (N.D. Cal. 2008). We rely on similar reasoning to that in those district court decisions, but reach a narrower holding as to the scope of FISA preemption. Our analysis of this issue proceeds as follows. First, we offer a brief review of the state secrets privilege. Second, we discuss one reason why the district court should not have dismissed the search claims based on the privilege. Third, we explain why FISA displaces the dismissal remedy of the common law state secrets privilege as applied to electronic FAZAGA V. WALLS 49 surveillance generally. Then we review the situations in which FISA’s procedures under § 1806(f) apply, including affirmative constitutional challenges to electronic surveillance. Finally, we explain why the present case fits at least one of the situations in which FISA’s procedures apply. Before we go on, we emphasize that although we hold that Plaintiffs’ electronic surveillance claims are not subject to outright dismissal at the pleading stage because FISA displaces the state secrets privilege, the FISA procedure is, not surprisingly, extremely protective of government secrecy. Under that procedure, Plaintiffs’ religion claims will not go forward under the open and transparent processes to which litigants are normally entitled. Instead, in the interest of protecting national security, the stringent FISA procedures require severe curtailment of the usual protections afforded by the adversarial process and due process. See, e.g., Yamada v. Nobel Biocare Holding AG, 825 F.3d 536, 545 (9th Cir. 2016) (holding that the district court’s use of ex parte, in camera submissions to support its fee order violated defendants’ due process rights); Intel Corp. v. Terabyte Int’l, Inc., 6 F.3d 614, 623 (9th Cir. 1993) (same); MGIC Indem. Corp. v. Weisman, 803 F.2d 500, 505 (9th Cir. 1986) (same). As it is Plaintiffs who have invoked the FISA procedures, we proceed on the understanding that they are willing to accept those restrictions to the degree they are applicable as an alternative to dismissal, and so may not later seek to contest them.23 23 We discuss how the district court is to apply the FISA procedures to Plaintiffs’ surviving claims on remand in infra Part V. 50 FAZAGA V. WALLS A. The State Secrets Privilege “The Supreme Court has long recognized that in exceptional circumstances courts must act in the interest of the country’s national security to prevent disclosure of state secrets, even to the point of dismissing a case entirely.” Jeppesen, 614 F.3d at 1077 (citing Totten v. United States, 92 U.S. 105, 107 (1876)). Neither the Supreme Court nor this court has precisely delineated what constitutes a state secret. Reynolds referred to “military matters which, in the interest of national security, should not be divulged.” 345 U.S. at 10. Jeppesen added that not all classified information is necessarily privileged under Reynolds. 614 F.3d at 1082. The state secrets privilege has been held to apply to information that would result in “impairment of the nation’s defense capabilities, disclosure of intelligence-gathering methods or capabilities, and disruption of diplomatic relations with foreign governments, or where disclosure would be inimical to national security.” Black v. United States, 62 F.3d 1115, 1118 (8th Cir. 1995) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). But courts have acknowledged that terms like “military or state secrets” are “amorphous in nature,” id. (citation omitted); the phrase “inimical to national security” certainly is. And although purely domestic investigations with no international connection do not involve state secrets, we recognize that the contours of the privilege are perhaps even more difficult to draw in a highly globalized, post-9/11 environment, where the lines between foreign and domestic security interests may be blurred. We do not attempt to resolve the ambiguity or to explain definitively what constitutes a “state secret.” But we note the ambiguity nonetheless at the outset, largely as a reminder that, as our court has previously noted, “[s]imply saying FAZAGA V. WALLS 51 ‘military secret,’ ‘national security’ or ‘terrorist threat’ or invoking an ethereal fear that disclosure will threaten our nation is insufficient to support the privilege.” Al-Haramain Islamic Found., Inc. v. Bush (Al-Haramain I), 507 F.3d 1190, 1203 (9th Cir. 2007). Created by federal common law, the modern state secrets doctrine has two applications: the Totten bar and the Reynolds privilege. The Totten bar is invoked “‘where the very subject matter of the action’ is ‘a matter of state secret.’” Id. at 1077 (quoting Reynolds, 345 U.S. at 11 n.26). It “completely bars adjudication of claims premised on state secrets.” Id.; see also Totten, 95 U.S. at 106–07. The Reynolds privilege, by contrast, “is an evidentiary privilege rooted in federal common law.” Kasza v. Browner, 133 F.3d 1159, 1167 (9th Cir. 1998); see also Gen. Dynamics Corp. v. United States, 563 U.S. 478, 485 (2011). It “may be asserted at any time,” and successful assertion “will remove the privileged evidence from the litigation.” Jeppesen, 614 F.3d at 1079–80. Here, after the Attorney General asserted the Reynolds privilege and the Government submitted both public and classified declarations setting out the parameters of its state secrets contention, the Government Defendants requested dismissal of Plaintiffs’ religion claims in toto—but not the Fourth Amendment and FISA claims—at the pleading stage. “Dismissal at the pleading stage under Reynolds is a drastic result and should not be readily granted.” Jeppesen, 614 F.3d at 1089. Only “if state secrets are so central to a proceeding that it cannot be litigated without threatening their disclosure” is dismissal the proper course. Id. at 1081 (quoting El-Masri v. United States, 479 F.3d 296, 308 (4th Cir. 2007)). Because there is a strong interest in allowing otherwise meritorious litigation to go forward, the court’s inquiry into the need for 52 FAZAGA V. WALLS the secret information should be specific and tailored, not vague and general. See id. at 1081–82; In re Sealed Case, 494 F.3d 139, 144–54 (D.C. Cir. 2007). Specifically, the Reynolds privilege will justify dismissal of the action in three circumstances: (1) if “the plaintiff cannot prove the prima facie elements of her claim with nonprivileged evidence”; (2) if “the privilege deprives the defendant of information that would otherwise give the defendant a valid defense to the claim”; and (3) if “privileged evidence” is “inseparable from nonprivileged information that will be necessary to the claims or defenses” such that “litigating the case to a judgment on the merits would present an unacceptable risk of disclosing state secrets.” Jeppesen, 614 F.3d at 1083 (citations omitted). The district court assumed that Plaintiffs could make a prima facie case without resorting to state secrets evidence, but determined that the second and third circumstances exist in this case and require dismissal.