Federal Judge Dismisses Surveillance Lawsuits

By Keith Perine | June 3, 2009 5:25 PM | | Comments (0)

A California federal judge has dismissed a raft of lawsuits against telecommunications companies related to the Bush administration's warrantless electronic surveillance program.

Vaughn R. Walker, a district judge in the Northern District of California, threw out the lawsuits because of a provision in a 2008 law that conferred civil immunity on telecom companies who cooperated with the government surveillance.

"We're deeply disappointed in Judge Walker's ruling today," said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "The retroactive immunity law unconstitutionally takes away Americans' claims arising out of the First and Fourth Amendments, violates the federal government's separation of powers as established in the Constitution, and robs innocent telecom customers of their rights without due process of law."

EFF and the ACLU said they would appeal Walker's [decision] (http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/att/orderhepting6309_0.pdf) to the 9th Circuit appeals court. The groups argue that the 2008 law is unconstitutional.

Walker did not dismiss surveillance-related lawsuits pending against the government.

"The court agrees with the United States and the telecommunications company defendants on this point: plaintiffs retain a means of redressing the harms alleged in their complaints by proceeding against governmental actors and entities who are, after all, the primary actors in the alleged wiretapping activities," Vaughn wrote.

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