Teleforum

Watchlisting people with known or suspected ties to terrorism has long been a key tool among U.S. counterterrorism and transportation security programs. For just as long, a wide range of people – from U.S. citizens to foreign nationals with no legal status in the United States – have litigated their suspected presence on watchlists or no-fly lists, claiming that those lists, or aspects of their administration, violate various tenets of due process and other rights. Last year, courts were particularly rough on the federal agencies charged with curating and using watchlists. For the first time, a district court held the government’s procedures with respect to the FBI’s centralized Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB), violates procedural due process of a group of twenty-three U.S. citizen plaintiffs. On the heels of that decision, the Supreme Court declined to review an en banc opinion by the Ninth Circuit suggesting that the government acted in bad faith with respect to the nearly 15-year long litigation co