The Supreme Court on Monday announced it will not hear a challenge over whether the public should have access to decisions issued by the federal government’s secret court that signs off on warrants to spy on Americans.
The high court rejected the American Civil Liberties Union‘s attempt to review Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinions between 2001 and 2015 related to the post-9/11 “global war on terrorism” begun under former President George W. Bush.
The ACLU in 2016 filed a motion to view the opinions, arguing the First Amendment requires the court to make them public. But an appellate court ruled last year that no court has jurisdiction to consider their argument and the justices’ decision on Monday left this ruling in place.
Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch and liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, writing that the court should consider the case because the government is challenging the high court‘s ability to review lower court decisions.
“On the government’s view, literally no court in this country has the power to decide whether citizens possess a First Amendment right of access to the work of our national security courts,” Mr. Gorsuch wrote.
The justices also point out that the case centers on public access to governmental decisions of “grave national importance.”
“If these matters are not worthy of our time, what is?” Mr. Gorsuch asked.
ACLU attorney Patrick Toomey said Monday that FISC “opinions are the law and they should be public, not kept hidden from Americans whose rights hang in the balance.”
“Secret court decisions are corrosive in a democracy, especially when they so often hand the government the power to peer into our digital lives,” Mr. Toomey said in a statement.
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