Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in the 5-to-4 decision, said a lawsuit filed by the former detainee, Javaid 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.
All that Mr. Iqbal’s suit plausibly suggests, Justice Kennedy wrote, “is that the nation’s top law enforcement officers, in the aftermath of a devastating terrorist attack, sought to keep suspected terrorists in the most secure conditions available until the suspects could be cleared of terrorist activity.”
Mr. Iqbal, a cable television installer on Long Island, was among thousands of Muslim men rounded up after the Sept. 11 attacks. Some, considered to be “of high interest,” were held in a special unit of the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
One of them was Mr. Iqbal, who, he said, 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 had been called a terrorist and a “Muslim killer” and that he had 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, alleging mistreatment based on his religion and national background. Monday’s decision, Ashcroft v. Iqbal, No. 07-1015, concerned only Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Mueller.
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.
“It should come as no surprise,” Justice Kennedy wrote, “that a legitimate policy directing law enforcement to arrest and detain individuals because of their suspected link to the attacks should produce a disparate, incidental impact on Arab Muslims, even though the purpose of the policy was to target neither Arabs nor Muslims.”
Justice David H. Souter, writing for himself and Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, said the accusations against the two officials in Mr. Iqbal’s lawsuit were specific enough to satisfy the requirements for bringing a suit.
“Iqbal does not say merely that Ashcroft was the architect of some amorphous discrimination,” Justice Souter wrote, “or that Mueller was instrumental in some ill-defined constitutional violation; he alleges that they helped to create the discriminatory policy he has described.”
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 that they had actually known of unconstitutional discrimination by subordinates and been deliberately indifferent to it.
Instead of accepting that concession, Justice Souter continued, the majority decided that even proof of such knowledge was insufficient.
A plaintiff like Mr. Iqbal, Justice Kennedy wrote, must be prepared to prove that the defendants “acted with discriminatory purpose.” The lawsuit, Justice Kennedy said, does not go that far and so must be dismissed.
In his dissent, Justice Souter wrote that the assertions in Mr. Iqbal’s lawsuit, coupled with the government’s concession, should have been enough to allow it to proceed. At the early stages of a suit, he added, such assertions need merely be plausible.
“The sole exception to this rule lies with allegations that are sufficiently fantastic to defy reality as we know it: claims about little green men, or the plaintiff’s recent trip to Pluto, or experiences in time travel,” Justice Souter wrote. “That is not what we have here.”
In response, Justice Kennedy said the problem with Mr. Iqbal’s suit was not that it was “unrealistic or nonsensical” but rather that Mr. Iqbal had made only allegations so bare that they were not entitled “to the presumption of truth.”
Justice Kennedy, who was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., wrote that Mr. Iqbal’s “account of his prison ordeal could, if proved, demonstrate unconstitutional misconduct” by officials other than Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Mueller. And, Justice Kennedy added, the lower courts might yet decide to allow Mr. Iqbal to amend his lawsuit to make more specific accusations about the complicity of the two men.
One of Mr. Iqbal’s lawyers, Alexander A. Reinert of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, said the decision amounted to a detour rather than a roadblock.
“What they’re telling us,” Professor Reinert said, “is that we need to put a little more meat on the bones of our complaint.”