Citing failure to prove that journalists, authors and political activists could be detained under the controversial National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that it would not hear the case commonly known as Hedges v. Obama, about a month after the federal government requested the court not take up the case.
Filed in January 2012, the Hedges v. Obama lawsuit specifically challengesSection 1021(b)(2) of the NDAA, which the plaintiffs argue contains vague language that allows the government to unlawfully and indefinitely detain U.S. citizens, including journalists, who “associate” or “substantially support” enemies of the U.S. such as terrorist groups like al-Qaida.
By declining to hear the case the nation’s highest court leaves a July 2013 decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals intact. In the court’s ruling, the justices explained they ruled against the plaintiffs — journalist Chris Hedges, former Middle East bureau chief for the New York Times and a senior fellow at the Nation Institute, linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky, whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, journalist Alexa O’Brien, journalist and activist Tangerine Bolen, Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir and Occupy London activist Kai Wargalla — because the court believed the plaintiffs failed to prove at the U.S. government would unlawfully detain journalists and political activists, and therefore had no standing to sue.
“Once again, the U.S. Supreme Court has shown itself to be an advocate for the government, no matter how illegal its action, rather than a champion of the Constitution and, by extension, the American people,” said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, in an official statement.
“No matter what the Obama administration may say to the contrary, actions speak louder than words, and history shows that the U.S. government is not averse to locking up its own citizens for its own purposes. What the NDAA does is open the door for the government to detain as a threat to national security anyone viewed as a troublemaker. According to government guidelines for identifying domestic extremists—a word used interchangeably with terrorists, that technically applies to anyone exercising their First Amendment rights in order to criticize the government.”
Tangerine Bolen, a co-plaintiff in the case, as well as the founder and executive director of RevolutionTruth, told MintPress News that while she was disappointed with the court’s decision to not hear the case — calling it a sad day for America — she wasn’t surprised.
“This activist, conservative majority court has proven that our representative democracy and an adherence to the Constitution and civil liberties is a thing of the past,” Bolen said. “There is total dedication to special interests, whereby the court has decided corporations are ‘persons’ and money is ‘speech,’ while declining to hear a case on which two of our most fundamental liberties pivot.”
She further noted that, “The United States is no longer a nation ruled by laws,” but is instead a nation “ruled by the capriciousness of men who have so steeped themselves in the myriad lies that arose out of a false and forced war in the wake of 9/11, that these men are willing to trade everything – including our Constitutional rights – for the power to indefinitely detain anyone, anywhere, at whim.
“The policies and actions of the United States Government have steadily increased the ranks of terrorists for 13 years, as our government behaves as the terror itself – carrying out illegal assassinations, kidnapping, torture, and secret detentions worldwide. It is the classic tale of becoming the very evil that one righteously believes one is fighting. This is the nature of the the U.S. government in a post 9/11 world – and the President, Congress and our Supreme Court are each complicit in this devastating sea change,” Bolen said.
Pushing back
Hedges told MintPress in April, that he hoped the Supreme Court would take up the case because the 2012 NDAA overturned about 150 years of domestic law in the U.S. that kept the U.S. military from carrying out domestic policing.
“I spent 20 years as a foreign correspondent, 15 of them with The New York Times,” Hedges said. “I interviewed numerous individuals deemed by the U.S. government to be terrorists, including some members of al-Qaeda, and traveled with armed groups labeled as terrorist organizations.
“When I reported the statements and activities of these individuals and groups, U.S. officialdom often made little distinction between them and me,” he continued. “This was true during the wars in Central America. It was true in the Middle East. And it was true when I covered global terrorism. There was no law at the time that permitted the government, because of my work as a reporter, to order the military to seize and detain me. Now there is.
“This law, if it is not struck down, will essentially replace our civilian judiciary with a military one. Those targeted under this law will not be warned beforehand that they will be arrested. They will not have a chance to get a lawyer. They will not see the inside of a courtroom. They will simply vanish.”
While some have accused Hedges and his co-plaintiffs as being conspiracy theorists and overly dramatic, there is nothing in the NDAA that would protect journalists from being indefinitely detained for talking to and writing about al-Qaida and other U.S.-dubbed terrorist organizations. The only protection awarded journalists is the government’s word, which Hedges says is not trustworthy.
“We don’t want to give the government this kind of power because they will use it,” Hedges said. He went on to explain that with stagnant and falling incomes, a high unemployment rate and climate change, the “elite are preparing legal mechanisms in which they can use wholesale surveillance and arbitrary detention to maintain order.”
As Bolen previously told MintPress, it’s disheartening that the courts and the mainstream media have not taken more of an interest in this case due to “the fact that we haven’t been indefinitely detained yet,” especially since Bolen says “there is no way to even find out who is being indefinitely detained under this provision,” or where those individuals are being held.
Although the Supreme Court ultimately declined to hear the case, the fight against indefinite detention isn’t completely over quite yet.
“Every plaintiff in this case is dedicated to righting the wrongs of the U.S. government, and to restoring our fundamental rights,” Bolen said. “I have spoken with our attorneys, and we will not be giving up. We will be seeking information on dual nationals who have been illegally detained by this government in other nations. We will also be filing suit in other areas – including the U.S. military’s human rights abuses and possibly over the illegal drone assassinations.”
Additionally, four states — California, Alaska, Virginia and Michigan — have passed legislation that Mike Maharrey, communications director of the Tenth Amendment Center, said prohibits any state resources or state officers from assisting in indefinite detention of that state’s residents.
Similar legislation is currently being debated or introduced in more than 10 other states.
Though Maharrey said this state-by-state legislation may not prevent the feds from indefinitely detaining individuals or even ensure due process privileges are respected, it sends a message to lawmakers in Washington, D.C., that certain provisions in the NDAA are “not constitutionally right or morally right.”
He told MintPress state and local activism is key in convincing both Democrats and Republicans to end their support for the defense act, since it’s easier to move the pressure for reform up the ladder than to start at the top.