In Ashcroft v. Al-Kidd, the high court today announced it will hear an appeal of a federal court ruling that 
said a lawsuit against Ashcroft could proceed. As noted by Savage, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit refused to dismiss Abdullah al-Kidd's lawsuit against Ashcroft. The appeals court said it was "repugnant to the Constitution" for the government to maintain that it "has the power to arrest and detain or restrict American citizens for months on end, in sometimes primitive conditions, not because they have committed a crime, but merely because the government wants to investigate them for possible wrongdoing."
Al-Kidd was arrested by federal officials at Dulles international Airport in 2003 and held as a "material witness" in another case. Kidd, a U.S. citizen, was eventually released. Represented by the ACLU, Al-Kidd sued Ashcroft alleging that his civil rights had been violated. His lawsuit says he was "strip-searched repeatedly and shackled for more than two weeks in a high-security cell where the lights were kept on," the Times reports.
In a press statement regarding the high court's decision to hear the case, the ACLU asserts that Al-Kidd was "released under onerous conditions that included confining his travel to four states, surrendering his passport and reporting to probation officers."
Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project and lead attorney for al-Kidd, said "Arresting and detaining someone for an extended period of time without probable cause to believe he violated the law goes against the most basic principles on which our country is founded. The appeals court made it very clear that former Attorney General Ashcroft could be held personally responsible if he used the material witness law to circumvent the Constitution's longstanding rule that a suspect may not be arrested without probable cause of wrongdoing."
The Obama administration appealed the Ninth Circuit's decision, arguing for absolute immunity from prosecution for top law enforcement officials.
The politically motivated "Palmer Raids" of 1919-1921 by the Department of Justice and Immigration and Naturalization Service targeted left-wing activist. The disruption and character assassination activities of the FBI's infamous Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) targeted civil rights and other progressive groups from 1956-1971. And more recently, state & federal authorities have 
conservative members ignored precedent and reversed longstanding policy in a head-long rush to protect Ashcroft and Mueller (right) from answering for their discriminatory actions. In the process the Court ended all supervisor liability for federal officials under Bivens even though various forms of such liability were conceded by the Government and recognized by all federal circuits that had addressed the issue.