Ali v. Federal Bureau of Prisons

The Supreme Court has declined to expand prisoners' rights to sue their jailers under the Federal Tort Claims Act for lost or damaged property.

The case was brought by prisoner Abdus-Shahid M. S. Ali, who temporarily left his two bags of possessions with a police officer before being transferred to a new prison. When the bags arrived, Ali noticed that several items were missing.

He filed an administrative tort claim with the Bureau of Prisons seeking to recover the items. After the claim was denied, he brought his case to U.S. District Court. The court dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction, ruling that the government had immunity from the lawsuit under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA).

The FTCA establishes a general waiver of sovereign immunity for tort claims against the government, esentially permitting plaintiffs to sue the federal government. However, it also makes several exceptions to the waiver, retaining the government's sovereign immunity. One exception is for "[a]ny claim arising in respect of [...] the detention of any goods, merchandise, or other property by any officer of customs or excise or any other law enforcement officer."

Ali argued that in context the phrase "any other law enforcement officer" referred only to officers working in customs and related activities, thus permitting him to sue the prison officer who confiscated his property. But the court applied the exception to any detention of goods by any law enforcement officer.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the dismissal of Ali's claim. It ruled that the phrase "any other law enforcement officer" in the FTCA was not merely a supplementary catch-all relating to the government's immunity in tax collection and customs situations. Rather, it was itself a broad grant of sovereign immunity covering any instance of detention of goods by law enforcement officers.

On May 29, 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court accepted review in the case, and allowed Ali to have his case heard without costs.

On Jan. 22, 2008, the Court concluded that the statute preserved immunity for all federal law enforcement officers, not just those associated with customs or excise functions.

In a 5-4 opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority that the use of the word "any" should be given its normal interpretation, which encompassed all federal officers whether or not they were involved in enforcing customs or excise laws. He wrote that the canons of statutory interpretation ejusdem generis and noscitur a sociis, which require a court to interpret a residual category following a list of specific examples consistent with the common theme of the specific examples, did not apply here. Why? In this case, there was no list of specifics preceding the category "any other law enforcement officer," but just a single example.

Chief Justice Roberts, along with Justices Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Samuel Alito, joined Thomas's opinion.

Justice Anthony Kennedy was joined in dissent by Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter and Stephen Breyer. Kennedy complained that the majority opinion misconstrued the longstanding canons of statutory interpretation and created confusion for lower courts that rely on them to read not just the Federal Tort Claims Act but all federal laws. Moreover, he observed, if Congress intended to immunize all federal law enforcement officers from tort immunity for property loss, it likely would have listed them first in the statute, and then added that quasi-law officers such as customs and excise officials were also covered.

Justice Stephen Breyer also penned a dissent, joined by Justice John Paul Stevens. Breyer ventured that even without referring to the rules of statutory interpretation, the context of the statute -- dealing with property loss and damage -- made clear that it was designed to protect federal officials likely to deal with citizen property, such as customs and excise officials and other law enforcement officers pressed into service in enforcing similar laws.